The 2026 German Development Economics (GDE) Conference and the 1st Conference of the EDEG took place on June 11-12, 2026, and was hosted by the Kiel Institute. The annual GDE conference brings together international scholars and researchers in development economics and neighboring fields. Plenary sessions with keynote speakers, parallel sessions with contributed papers, and poster sessions reflect the current state of research in development economics and provide a forum for exchange for researchers and practitioners.

The conference featured the inaugural EDEG Best Paper Award for Early Career Researchers in recognition of outstanding scholarly contribution and excellence in research. The award was presented to Anton Heil and Gabriel Leite-Mariante for the paper „Occupational Variety and Economic Development“*, and Else-Marie van der Herik for the paper „Occupational Variety and Economic Development“*. This award acknowledges the originality, quality, and impact of the research work, and the recipients’ promising contributions to the field of development economics for a paper written by early career researchers (within two years of their PhD completion).

Keynote Speakers

Eliana La Ferrara (Harvard Kennedy School)
Abhijeet Singh (Stockholm School of Economics)

Local Organizers

Tobias Heidland and Rainer Thiele (Kiel Institute)

Program Chair

Krisztina Kis-Katos (University of Göttingen)

Selection Committee

Tessa Bold (Stockholm University), Isabel Günther (ETH Zürich), Tobias Heidland (Kiel Institute), Krisztina Kis-Katos (University of Göttingen), Andreas Landmann (Marburg University), Jann Lay (GIGA), Sabine Liebenehm (University of Saskatchewan), Matthias Schündeln (Goethe University Frankfurt), Rainer Thiele (Kiel Institute)

Submission

The CfP closed on February 15. 

Program

The program can be found here.

* listed in alphabetical order