News
The Doctoral Workshop 2021 of the Research Group on Development Economics of the German Economic Association will be organized by Christian Lessmann from the TU Dresden and will take place from 16-17 September 2021 in Dresden and online. The workshop’s aim is to enable doctoral students to improve their research, advise them on the preparation of a refereed journal article, practice academic discussions and build informal networks.
The program as well as further information on the event can be found here.
The annual conference was held on 17-18 June 2021 and brought together more than 150 international scholars and researchers of development economics and neighboring fields. Plenary sessions with keynote speakers and parallel sessions with contributed papers reflected the current state of research in development economics and provided a forum for exchange for researchers and practitioners. Due to the COVID pandemic the event was held fully virtual.
Keynote Speakers
Anandi Mani (Oxford University)
Leonard Wantchekon (Princeton University)
Local Organizers
Dierk Herzer (HSU Hamburg), Jann Lay (GIGA Hamburg) and Rainer Thiele (IfW Kiel).
Selection Committee
Axel Dreher (Heidelberg University), Andreas Fuchs (University of Göttingen), Michael Grimm (University of Passau), Isabel Günther (ETH Zürich), Anke Hoeffler (University of Konstanz), Jann Lay (GIGA Hamburg), Matthias Schündeln (Goethe University Frankfurt) and Rainer Thiele (IfW Kiel).
Next year the conference will be hosted by the University of Stuttgart-Hohenheim. The Call for Papers will be published in November/December this year.
Research of Members
We find that foraging humans forage, reproduce, share parenting, and even organise their social groups in similar ways as surrounding mammal and bird species, depending on where they live in the world. Our results imply that local environments exert a key influence on how foraging human populations and non-human species behave, despite their very different backgrounds. Local environmental conditions select for similar foraging, social, and reproductive behaviors across human foragers and non-human animals, driving behavioral diversity worldwide.
China has become a major source of global development finance, but the nature and consequences of its official financing activities are poorly understood. The absence of systematic evidence and rigorous analysis on the economic growth effects of Chinese development finance represents a major blind spot in the literature. This article introduces a new dataset of official financing from China to 138 developing countries between 2000 and 2014. This allows us then to investigate whether Chinese development finance affects economic growth in recipient countries. The results demonstrate that Chinese development finance boosts short-term economic growth. An additional project increases growth by between 0.41 and 1.49 percentage points two years after commitment, on average. These effects persist across different aid sectors and appear to be driven by increases in investment and - to a lesser extent - consumption. While this study does not find that significant financial support from China impairs the overall effectiveness of aid from Western donors, aid from the United States tends to be more effective in countries that receive no substantial support from China. Overall, this evidence should allay some of the fears that policymakers have expressed about China acting as “rogue donor” that undermines the effectiveness of Western assistance.
Vacancies
The Chair of Development Economics at the University of Passau is inviting applications for the position of a Graduate Teaching Assistant in Development Economics (doctoral position). The successful candidate will have the opportunity to study towards a doctorate and to conduct research in relation to the research undertaken by the Chair. Ongoing research projects include for example the assessment of interventions to prevent and control noncommunicable diseases in South-East Asia, of interventions supporting micro-, small and medium-sized firms in Burkina Faso, of training interventions to enhance sustainable farming in Indonesia and of interventions to combine food security with female empowerment in Bangladesh and Ethiopia, among others.
The submission of applications is possible until October 10th, 2021.
For more information on the vacancy, please click here.
The Faculty of Law and Economics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-University Bonn and the The German Development Institute / Deutsches Institut für Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) are looking for a joint appointment as of March 1st, 2022 of a Head of Programme (m/f/d) for the research programme „Transformation of Economic and Social Systems“ of the DIE (Bonn) combined with a Cooperation Professorship (W2) for International Economics / Development Economics (University of Bonn).
Applications can be submitted until October 15th, 2021.
For further details on the vacancy, please click here.
Event Information
The Research Conference on „Sustainability in Global Value Chains“, jointly organized by The Research Network Sustainable Global Supply Chains and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO), will take place on 7 December 2021 and is part of the Forum on Globalization and Industrialization (FGI 2021) held on 6 December 2021. It aims to bring together empirical research on sustainability topics in global value chains.
The organizers welcome submissions of full-length papers using micro and macro analyses, as well as quantitative and qualitative approaches. Interested applicants can submit the extended abstract by 31 May 2021 and the paper by 30 July 2021.
Further details on the conference as well as on the submission of papers can be found here.
The new program for the 3D Seminar Series for the summer term 2021 is now available. The seminar is organized by Sarah Langlotz and Lennart Kaplan (University of Göttingen) and aims at bringing together two speakers – one researcher and one practitioner – to touch upon key topics in development policy with the goal of stimulating a meaningful dialogue across the theory & practice divide.
For further information, please click here .