News
The annual conference on 9-10 June 2022 hosted by the University of Hohenheim brings together international scholars and researchers of development economics and neighboring fields. Plenary sessions with keynote speakers, parallel sessions with contributed papers, and poster sessions will reflect the current state of research in development economics and provide a forum for exchange for researchers and practitioners. The conference is planned as a physical meeting, yet if the pandemic situation does not allow such a meeting, the organizers may switch to a fully or partially online format. If the meeting is held physically, participants will need a proof of vaccination or recovery or a negative test result.
Keynote Speakers
Christopher B. Barrett (Cornell University)
Christopher Udry (Northwestern University)
Local Organizers
Regina Birner and Manfred Zeller (University of Hohenheim).
Selection Committee
Axel Dreher (Heidelberg University), Andreas Fuchs (University of Göttingen), Michael Grimm (University of Passau), Isabel Günther (ETH Zürich), Krisztina Kis-Katos (University of Göttingen) and Matthias Schündeln (Goethe University Frankfurt).
Call for Papers
Submission Page (the submission is possible starting November 15th 2021)
The Doctoral Workshop 2021 of the Research Group on Development Economics of the German Economic Association was organized by Christian Lessmann from the TU Dresden and took place from 16-17 September 2021 in Dresden as well as online. The workshop’s aim was 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.
Research of Members
While illicit capital flight is a major concern of policymakers in developing countries, there is only little research on the possible link between capital flight and development aid. In this paper, we address the issue for Nepal, a stereotypical financially closed developing economy that is highly dependent on resources from abroad. Distinguishing features of our approach are the use of a narrowly defined proxy of capital flight, based on trade cost-adjusted mirror trade statistics, and the focus on the foreign-exchange cash component of development aid. We document a robust partial correlation between aid and outward capital flight that is economically and statistically significant. Interestingly, this positive correlation is not observable for remittances, an alternative form of foreign-exchange inflows where the capital flight motivation is absent. Furthermore, it is visible in the FX cash component but not in broader aid definitions that include in-kind transfers, or in multilateral and IMF loans. Finally, when comparing the subcomponents of export underinvoicing and import overinvoicing, only the latter is driving our results.
Almost half of the world's states provide bilateral development assistance. While previous research takes the set of donor countries as exogenous, this article introduces a new dataset on aid giving that covers all countries in the world, both rich and poor, and explores the determinants of aid donorship. It argues and shows empirically that democratic institutions support the setup of an aid program in richer countries but undermine its establishment in poorer countries. The findings hold in instrumental-variable regressions and the pattern is similar for the amount of aid.
Vacancies
The Division of Environmental and Resource Economics of the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at the University of Göttingen is looking for a Post-Doctoral Researcher in Agricultural Economics. The position is associated with the Research Training Group (RTG) 2654 “Sustainable Food Systems” funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and involves interdisciplinary research on questions related to “Sustainable Food Systems”. It is limited to three years with an option of prolongation for up to three more years and should be filled immediately.
The submission of applications is possible until January 31st, 2022.
For further details on the position, please click on the respective links for the vacancy in German or in English.
The University of Passau invites applications for fully-funded Ph.D. and postdoc positions in its new interdisciplinary DFG Research Training Group “Digital Platform Ecosystems” (DPE). The Research Training Group DPE is a graduate excellence program generously granted by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It forms a unique, vibrant interdisciplinary research community of leading research partners from the disciplines of information systems, management and organizational research, marketing, economics, as well as communications science.
Positions are available for three years, starting October 2022. Doctoral and post-doctoral researchers receive highly personalized mentoring and a tailored, interdisciplinary, and generously funded training program, including a three-months research stay abroad. Post-doctoral researchers receive advanced training and take on leadership responsibilities in the Research Training Group.
For applicants with a background in Development Economics and Quantitative Methods the Research Training Group offers the possibility to engage in randomized field experiments and other types of field research in Sub-Saharan Africa and Indonesia to explore the potential of Digital Platform Ecosystems for firms, farms and households.
Applications can be submitted until February 28th, 2022.
For more information, please see the vacancies on the website of the University of Passau ; for additional questions, please contact Prof. Dr. Michael Grimm (michael.grimm@uni-passau.de).
Event Information
The Thailand-Vietnam Socio-Economic Panel (TVSEP) Team invites submissions to the international conference on “Shocks and resilience in rural Southeast Asia” to be held in Göttingen (as a hybrid event) on May 23rd and 24th, 2022.
The submission deadline is January 31st, 2022 (midnight CET).
For further information on the event and the Call for Papers, please click here.
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.