A $1.685 million gift by the Charles Koch Foundation was given to Iowa State’s department of economics Monday morning.

The gift will span over five years and go toward a new program which will study Midwest markets and entrepreneurship and is an Iowa State agricultural entrepreneurship initiative. 

The Charles Koch Foundation is a nonprofit organization that supports more than 300 universities and colleges across the United States, according to the foundation’s website.

“[This gift] will help us to fill a gap in research and education on how Midwest markets work, and how they might work better to support Midwestern entrepreneurs and innovators,” said Joshua Rosenbloom, chair of the department of economics.

The foundation’s gift could increase as it pledged to match other gifts given to the program, up to $2.5 million.

Specifically, the contribution will support the hiring of one or two new faculty members and the program will award up to three graduate student fellowships and six undergraduate student scholarships.

The new resources also provide support for the program’s research, which includes a project to better understand how state tax policies affect the climate for business and economic activity.

“Border Index” improves on existing indexes that rate states on their business climates by making comparisons of tax effects on economic activity in areas close to state borders.

The program will focus on several areas in entrepreneurship, including the challenges faced by entrepreneurs in fostering start-up companies in rural markets, factors that may reverse the slow pace of entrepreneurship in the Midwest and the Midwestern landscape for entrepreneurial finance.

It will also support research on topics including how Midwest states can attract and retain human capital and how government policies enhance or confine such efforts, analyzing how taxes, regulations and governmental policies impact entrepreneurship and economic growth.

“Studies of entrepreneurship, innovation and economic growth have focused predominantly on the experiences of cities, and mainly on the East and West Coasts,” said Peter Orazem, university professor of economics who directs the program. “That’s why we believe it’s important to better understand how Midwest markets function in a world where increasingly people and companies benefit from locating near one another.”

The gift by the Charles Koch Foundation comes as part of the “Forever True, For Iowa State” campaign, which has a goal to raise $1.1 billion for the university.