Our mission is to deliver world-class policy-driven research at an affordable cost. We understand that conducting world-class research is resource-intensive and researchers, especially young researchers, struggle to generate big-size funding. Our experience and innovative approach to each research helps find the most cost-effective design of the data collection. Another important barrier we observed over the years is that research institutions often do not invest to adequately understand the need of the researchers. Each research and researcher is unique and deserves the focused attention of the top management. Yet, most research institutions manage research following a generic formula. ECONS, on the other hand, is a boutique research institution where our top management invests in each research to understand its peculiarity and uniqueness and offer need-based solutions. 

Moreover, researchers’ opportunity costs of engaging policymakers are often high, and hiring a policy manager for doing policy engagement is expensive. This often results in the underutilization of high-quality research in the policy space. We solve this opportunity cost issue creatively using our home-grown experience, expertise, and connections. 

In short,

(1)    we reduce field costs through the bespoke design of fieldwork for each research considering its time and budget constraint. Our experience in conducting research in different contexts, our access to pools of experienced data collectors from all over the country, and our connection with the administrators and local communities- all help to cut costs without compromising data quality.

(2)    we believe that willingness to volunteer and the ability to engage with communities are two qualities that enrich action research and fieldwork-based research. These qualities help build rapport with the community where the research takes place and imbibe a sense of vocation among research staff. In Bangladesh, data collectors are often a part-time endeavor for supplementary income. A sense of vocation makes money a weak motivator for our enumerators; their contribution to the research and their sense of ownership become the strongest motivator. Our enumerators often participate in voluntary community activities and we prioritize enumerators with a tendency to help the community during hiring. Many of our young data collectors are volunteers at Bangladesh Environment Movement  (BAPA), Greenvoice, and Pulse Bangladesh.   

(3)    we who belong to the top management also believe in voluntarism. We invest voluntary hours for each of our projects at no cost to the researchers to engage policymakers. Therefore, researchers do not have to budget for our time for activities that we do to take study results to relevant policymakers. We also help researchers establish initial contact with policymakers during the design phase of the research without any charge. 

Currently, we are conducting collaborative studies with the Ministry of Education, Ministry of Health, a2i, SREDA, UNDP, Bangladesh Bank, and SME Foundation.