5th ACES Summer School in Political Economy 2026 (Historical Reference)

5th ACES Summer School in Political Economy 2026 (Historical Reference)

This page records the verified 2026 call for the Association for Comparative Economic Studies (ACES) Summer School in Political Economy. It is a historical reference, not an open application listing. The official ACES page says the school was scheduled to take place in Kathmandu, Nepal, from August 12 through 14, 2026, and that applications submitted after April 15, 2026 at 11:59 pm EST would not be considered.

The deadline has passed. The official page does not offer a late-application route, rolling admission option, or replacement deadline. ACES’s official conference and announcement pages also do not publish a subsequent summer-school call. Do not send the materials described below expecting them to be reviewed for the 2026 school. They are included so that students, advisers, and researchers can understand what this cycle offered and can recognize a future ACES call if one is announced.

At a glance

The “Asia” tag reflects the announced host location in Nepal. It does not change the eligibility rule: the official call describes the intended applicants by doctoral status and research area, not by nationality or residence. The official page does not say that the school is limited to applicants from Nepal, Asia, or any other region.

What ACES offered in this cycle

The school was described as a three-day workshop combining instruction, research discussion, and mentorship. ACES said that experienced faculty would expose participants to research in political economy, economic history, and development economics. The point was not simply to attend a sequence of lectures. Participants were expected to interact with faculty and with other students, receive feedback on their research ideas in focused mentoring sessions, and build relationships with other early-career researchers working on related questions.

That format matters for a doctoral student whose project is still being shaped. A short research outline can contain a promising question without yet having a finished paper, complete results, or a final empirical design. The value of a workshop like this is the chance to test whether the question is clear, whether the proposed mechanism makes sense, whether the evidence could answer it, and which parts of the argument need more work. Those are reasonable goals for a summer school and do not require applicants to present a completed dissertation chapter.

The official page also emphasizes the peer dimension. Students would have the opportunity to compare research ideas with other PhD students interested in related areas of economics. That can help a researcher see whether a project is legible outside a narrow adviser relationship, identify adjacent literatures, and find people facing similar problems with data, institutions, measurement, or research design. These benefits are descriptions of the programme’s intended format, not a promise of publication, a degree credit, or a continuing funding award.

Faculty listed for the 2026 school

ACES published a faculty list for the Kathmandu school. The scheduled faculty were:

• Farzana Afridi, ISI Delhi
• Michael Callen, London School of Economics
• Ruben Enikolopov, Barcelona School of Economics
• Saumitra Jha, Stanford University
• Horacio Larreguy, Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México
• Sara Lowes, University of California, San Diego
• Rohini Pande, Yale University
• Maria Petrova, Barcelona School of Economics
• Shaoda Wang, University of Chicago
• Jie Zhou, Yale University

The list shows the breadth of the advertised academic coverage, but it should not be read as a guarantee that every faculty member would mentor every applicant or that a particular research topic would be assigned to a particular person. The official call says that faculty would lead sessions and that students would receive feedback through focused mentoring; it does not publish individual matching decisions.

Eligibility: what the official call actually says

The 2026 call invited PhD students interested in political economy, economic history, and development economics. That is the complete eligibility description on the official opportunity page. It does not add a nationality requirement, a university ranking requirement, a minimum year of study, a dissertation-candidacy requirement, or a rule that applicants must already have results.

A strong subject fit could include work on institutions, state capacity, political incentives, public-sector performance, economic history, development policy, conflict, elections, taxation, public finance, or related questions where economic outcomes and political or institutional forces interact. The applicant would still need to explain the connection clearly. A project being quantitative, historical, or interdisciplinary is not by itself enough; the outline should show why the question belongs in the areas named by ACES.

Because the page does not state that the school is restricted to a particular region, a student should not infer that the “Asia” location tag creates an Asia-only eligibility rule. At the same time, the page also does not explicitly promise worldwide eligibility. The careful summary is therefore the one ACES published: PhD students with an interest in the three named fields.

Cost and support

The official source states that there was no fee to apply and no fee to attend. It also says that ACES provided accommodation and at least one meal per day. Those are in-kind participation benefits, not a cash scholarship or stipend. The page does not state a tuition award, research grant, fixed living allowance, or guaranteed reimbursement amount.

Travel support was less certain. ACES said that it tried to make funding available to help students offset travel costs, especially students from low-income countries. It also warned students not to apply with the expectation that travel would be funded by ACES and encouraged them to seek support from their home institutions. For the closed 2026 cycle, the safe interpretation is that accommodation and the meal provision were advertised programme support, while flights, visas, local transport, and other travel costs should not have been treated as covered.

This distinction is important when evaluating the value of the opportunity. “Free to attend” did not mean that every cost of reaching Kathmandu would disappear. A student planning for a future call would need to ask their department, graduate school, research centre, or external funder about travel money and should wait for the next official call before relying on any changed support terms.

What the closed application required

The official application instructions named two materials:

1. A two-page research outline on a specific topic.
2. A CV.

The materials were to be emailed to Brian Deutsch, Coordinator of Membership Services, at [email protected]. The official page did not direct applicants to an application portal. It also did not list a fee, transcript, recommendation letter, or separate personal statement as part of the two-item submission. Applicants should not treat that historical list as a promise that a future call will use the same format, but it is the verified requirement for the 2026 cycle.

A useful two-page outline would have made one research question easy to find. It could briefly explain the setting, the motivating puzzle, the mechanism or hypothesis, the evidence the researcher hoped to use, and the proposed way of distinguishing the main explanation from alternatives. The short format rewards selection and clarity. It is usually more helpful to explain one feasible project than to list every idea in a dissertation.

The CV should have made the project credible without trying to become a second proposal. Relevant training, research assistance, fieldwork, archival work, programming, language skills, working papers, and presentations can help a reader understand what the applicant is prepared to do. The outline and CV should also agree about the applicant’s research area. These are preparation suggestions, not extra eligibility rules published by ACES.

Timeline and closed status

The historical deadline was April 15, 2026 at 11:59 pm EST. ACES stated that applications received after that deadline would not be considered. That wording rules out treating the page as a rolling opportunity. The front matter therefore retains the real closed-cycle date, 2026-04-15, and sets historicalReference = true. The historical flag tells the site that the page should be presented as an archive entry rather than as an expired live listing that appears to be awaiting applications.

The school itself was scheduled for August 12–14, 2026 in Kathmandu. Those dates describe the event associated with the closed call; they are not a new application window. Since the official pages checked do not announce a next ACES Summer School cycle, this page does not invent a future deadline. A reader interested in a later edition should look for a new notice from ACES rather than reuse the 2026 contact instructions without checking them.

Questions a future applicant should verify

If ACES announces another summer school, several details should be checked again instead of copied from this archive:

• Whether the host city and event dates have changed.
• Whether the eligible audience remains PhD students only or expands to another group.
• Whether the school remains free to apply to and attend.
• Whether accommodation and meals are still provided and under what conditions.
• Whether travel assistance is available, and whether it has a stated application process.
• Whether the submission still requires a two-page outline and CV.
• Whether Brian Deutsch remains the correct contact.
• Whether the deadline is fixed and whether late applications are excluded.

The official 2026 source is the authority for the facts recorded here. ACES’s own pages are the right place to confirm a later call, not third-party opportunity roundups or copied social posts. Until a new official announcement appears, the 2026 information should be used for historical context only.

Bottom line

The 5th ACES Summer School in Political Economy was a no-fee, three-day doctoral workshop scheduled for Kathmandu from August 12–14, 2026. Its stated academic focus was political economy, economic history, and development economics. ACES advertised accommodation and at least one meal per day, while warning that students should not assume travel would be funded. The application consisted of a two-page research outline and a CV emailed to Brian Deutsch, with a firm April 15, 2026 deadline.

That application cycle is closed. No later summer-school round is announced on the official ACES pages checked for this update. This page preserves the verified 2026 details as a historical reference and should not be used as an instruction to submit a late application.