2023 German Development Economics Conference

The 2023 German Development Economics conference will take place on 1-2 June, 2023, and will be hosted by the Technical University Dresden. The annual conference 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.

©  Klaus Gigga
Keynote Speakers

Michèle Tertilt (University of Mannheim)
Stelios Michalopoulos (Brown University)

Local Organizers

Christian Leßmann (Technical University Dresden).

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), Christian Leßmann (TU Dresden) and Matthias Schündeln (Goethe University Frankfurt).

Submission

The CfP closed on February 15.

Program

Further information about the program, the venue and the registration procedure are available here.


Research of Members

Braczkowski, A.R., O’Bryan, C.J., Lessmann, C. et al. The unequal burden of human-wildlife conflict. Commun Biol 6, 182 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-023-04493-y

Human-wildlife conflict is one of the most pressing sustainable development challenges globally. This is particularly the case where ecologically and economically important wildlife impact the livelihoods of humans. Large carnivores are one such group and their co-occurrence with low-income rural communities often results in real or perceived livestock losses that place increased costs on already impoverished households. Here we show the disparities associated with the vulnerability to conflict arising from large carnivores on cattle (Bos taurus) globally. Across the distribution of 18 large carnivores, we find that the economic vulnerability to predation losses (as measured by impacts to annual per capita income) is between two and eight times higher for households in transitioning and developing economies when compared to developed ones. This potential burden is exacerbated further in developing economies because cattle keepers in these areas produce on average 31% less cattle meat per animal than in developed economies. In the lowest-income areas, our estimates suggest that the loss of a single cow or bull equates to nearly a year and a half of lost calories consumed by a child. Finally, our results show that 82% of carnivore range falls outside protected areas, and five threatened carnivores have over one third of their range located in the most economically sensitive conflict areas. This unequal burden of human-carnivore conflict sheds light on the importance of grappling with multiple and conflicting sustainable development goals: protecting life on land and eliminating poverty and hunger.

Further Information.

Hoeffler, Anke; Sterck, Olivier, 2022. Is Chinese aid different?. In: World Development. Elsevier. 156, 105908. ISSN 0305-750X. eISSN 1873-5991. Available under: doi:10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105908.

China is commonly depicted as a "rogue" donor, using aid to further its own interests abroad and secure access to natural resources. Especially China’s involvement in African countries has been criticized for being guided by self-interest rather than recipient need or merit. For the period 2000-2012, we compare China’s aid allocation behaviour to that of the five largest donor countries globally: France, Germany, Japan, the UK, and the USA. We use regression analysis and a rigorous variance decomposition method to measure the importance of various factors in predicting aid commitments. We find that donors differ markedly in how they allocate aid. While Germany, Japan, the USA, and the UK assign high importance to recipient need, France’s and China’s allocation models are, for a large part, driven by variables that relate to self-interest: trade in the case of France, and the adherence to the "One-China policy" in the case of China. However, China is not a purely selfish donor. As most Western donors, China commits more aid to poorer countries. Furthermore, we find no evidence that commercial interests, such as trade or access to natural resources, determine Chinese aid allocation. This latter result contrasts with Western donors, which allocate more aid to their trade partners. France and the UK also commit significantly more aid to their former colonies. In conclusion, the claim that China’s aid allocation is different must be qualified.

The study made use of a dataset published by Axel Dreher and Andreas Fuchs - also members of the Research Group on Development Economics - together with Brad Parks, Austin M. Strange and Michael J. Tierney in the article "Apples and Dragon Fruits: The Determinants of Aid and Other Forms of State Financing from China to Africa".

Further Information.


Vacancies

Postdoctoral Position (m/f/d, 100% for 3 years)

The RWI – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research is inviting applications for a Postdoctoral Position (m/f/d, 100% for 3 years) in the new Policy Lab “Climate Change, Development and Migration”. The position will be part of a new research project that conducts a rigorous impact evaluation of an agricultural insurance in Vietnam, funded by the German Institute for Development Evaluation (DEval) and in cooperation with the German Development Bank KfW and University Göttingen. The project will focus on a market-ready agricultural insurance product for smallholder farm households. The project aims at generating evidence on whether insurance uptake increases household income and on whether access to information stimulates the demand for insurance. To do so, the project will implement several randomized controlled trials and collect household survey data in Vietnam.

More information can be found here.


Event Information

Doctoral Workshop 2022

The Doctoral Workshop 2022 of the Research Group on Development Economics of the German Economic Association was organized by Professor Tilman Brück (IGZ, HU Berlin & ISDC) and took place on September 22nd and 23rd, 2022 in Berlin, Germany. The workshop’s aim was to enable doctoral students to improve their ongoing research, advise them on the preparation of a refereed journal article, practice academic discussions and build informal networks.

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