Activities

SOME SELECTED TALKS

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Nizza, 4 September 2018: "Fields of study choices and the reproduction of gender inequalities", presentation at the 30th EAEPE Conference (paper joint work with Carlo D'Ippoliti).


Tutzing, 6 March 2018: "Development and freedom, development as freedom"?, talk at the conference "Capitalism and freedom" (in German), Evangelische Akademie Tutzing.


Göttingen, 31 January 2018: participation at the panel discussion "Development: Between Model and Reality", University of Göttingen, organized by the students of Kritische Wirtschaftswissenschaften Göttingen.


New Delhi, 5 December 2017: "Behavioural development economics - progress or fad?", lecture at the DAAD-funded workshop "New Paradigsm of Economic Development: Social and Environmental Dimensions”, Network for Comparative Economic Development Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University.


Tübingen, 5 July 2017: "Individuelle Zielsetzungen - ein Ansatzpunkt für das gute Leben?", talk at the lecture series organized by Rethinking Economics Tübingen.


Helsinki, 22 May 2017: "Old vs. New Behavioural Economics: A Comparison Using the Case of 'Aspiration Traps', talk at the TINT Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Workshop on "Economics and/or Psychology?".


Budapest, 22, October 2016: "Inequalities, policy-making, institutions and human development. A framework and and an Illustration", talk at the YSI-INET Plenary "Piecing Together a Paradigm".


Oxford, 14 Sept 2016: "What are the policy implications of aspiration traps?", presentation at the Development Studies Association (DSA) Conference 2016.


Berlin, 26 Oct 2015: "What development economics can learn from behavioural economics", invited talk at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) & Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (giz) (in German).


Santiago de Chile, 10 June 2014: "Towards a political economy of the middle-income trap", presentation at the REPAL Annual conference.


Washington D.C., 30 May 2014: "Socio-economic family background, household situations, educational aspirations and achievements", invited presentation at the 4th World Bank Equity Conference on Aspirations, Poverty and Inequality.

ORGANIZED EVENTS AND OTHER ACTIVITIES


Here is a blog post I wrote for developingeconomics.org on "Think Positive, Climb out of Poverty? It’s Just Not So Easy!"

I refer to a growing literature that shows how hope, optimism and a positive outlook on life can help fight poverty. I agree these are important (already because they have a value as such!), but in communicating their contribution to economic development, I argue that it is important not to overstate their role, but to only think of behavioral interventions as part of a policy mix. The blog post discusses why, the longer version is in this paper from 2017.


Here is another blog post from developingeconomics.org on "Poor Behavior, Good Behavioral Policies? Double Standards for the North and South". In it, I discuss that ethics and normative implications of behavioral policies have received much less attention in poor countries as compared to rich countries. This is problematic not only because the autonomy and well-being of people in poor countries should be of no less value, but also because thinking about consequences and side-effects from a normative perspective can help improve the design of behavioural policies.


Together with Theresa Neef (DIW Berlin) and Jakob Hafele (University of Vienna), I organized the EAEPE Symposium 2017 on "Developing Economics: Towards a Critical Research Agenda for Development Economics" in Berlin, June 2017. This was our program. You can read about our debates and lessons learned in this blog post.


From 2014-2018, I was an elected Council member of EAEPE, a European pluralist economics association. I was in charge of young scholar relations and organized the EAEPE "Young Scholars Pre-conference", for the first time in Genova/Italy (2015), and jointly with Claudius Gräbner, Madeleine Böhm and Till Kellerhoff in Manchester (2016).


Alongside an inspiring group of other people, I was involved in organizing the 2015 "Teaching Economics in the 21st Century" Conference in Berlin. I am currently editing two volumes that will reflect debates and inputs from this conference with Wolfram Elsner and Samuel Decker (Routledge 2018).