News
New VoxEU column on "Russia’s e-commerce trade in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion"
Russia’s e-commerce trade in the aftermath of the 2022 invasion: Evidence from high-frequency dataAlexandra Avdeenko, Maximilian Kaiser, Krisztina Kis-Katos
Whether economic sanctions against Russia have real effects has been increasingly called into question. This column suggests that changes in e-commerce can demonstrate whether and how the 2022 Western sanctions contributed to de-linking Russia from the West. An analysis of trends in cross-border international online retail based on digitally recorded daily transactions data from 2,288 international and Russian companies shows substantial declines in Russia’s e-commerce transactions. About five weeks after the war started, revenues from e-commerce imports to Russia had fallen by half, with no signs of compensation by Russian retailers in the sample studied.
Full text: https://voxeu.org/article/russia-s-e-commerce-trade-aftermath-2022-invasion
We happily announce that Elías Cisneros was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship. His project "From human to planetary health: Global land-use impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic" is among five projects from the University of Göttingen that received a grant in the last call of the Horizon 2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships.
To learn more, visit planet-health.eu
Geo-coded Twitter data R Package
Twitmo is a new and easy to use R Package that can generates and processes geo-coded Twitter data. You can use it to generate innovative data for any topic that is discussed on Twitter. Twitmo was featured as a top 40 package on CRAN. If you are interested, please get in touch with us.Buchmueller, A., G. Kant, C. Weisser, B. Säfken, T. Kneib, and K. Kis-Katos (2021). Twitmo: Twitter Topic Modeling and Visualization for R (R package version 0.1.2).
Geo-coded Twitter data
Do you want to generate interesting data for your thesis or research? TTLocVis is a new and easy to use tool that generates and processes geo-coded Twitter data. You can use it to generate innovative data for any topic that is discussed on Twitter. To learn more visit our TTLocVis website. If you are interested, please get in touch with us.Kant, G., Weisser, C. and Säfken, B. (2020), TTLocVis: A Twitter Topic Location Visualization Package. Journal of Open Source Software, 5 (54), 2507, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.02507.
We thank the Campus-Institut Data Science (CIDAS) for funding this project.
New VoxEU column on "China’s mask diplomacy"
China’s mask diplomacy: Political and business ties facilitate access to critical medical goods during the coronavirus pandemicAndreas Fuchs, Lennart Kaplan, Krisztina Kis-Katos, Sebastian S. Schmidt, Felix Turbanisch, Feicheng Wang
China assumed an important role during the worldwide outbreak of COVID-19 as the main exporter of critical medical goods such as face masks and disinfectants. However, shipments of medical goods have been turned into propaganda campaigns by Chinese state media, raising the question if access to medical goods is granted upon political goodwill. This column uses official monthly trade data from Chinese Customs to investigate the emerging trade patterns, both for commercial exports and donations of medical goods. It shows that both existing trade linkages and political ties to Chinese provinces can help to attract Chinese medical goods.
Full text: https://voxeu.org/article/china-s-mask-diplomacy
It fills us with extreme sadness that our esteemed colleague, Stephan Klasen, has passed away. He shaped the field of German development economics more than anyone else over the last two decades, by defining research agendas, teaching and mentoring students, leading big research initiatives, and engaging in high-impact policy advice. His generous support of younger researchers but also colleagues helped to build a large and vibrant German development community. We were lucky enough to still get to know him and will cherish his memory.
The following video recording of Stephan Klasen's farewell lecture from November 2019 reflects on his academic life in his own words:
The paper on The Multidimensional Stephan Klasen Exposure Index: Why Wonder Woman Should Become a Postdoc and Wear White Socks with Sandals offers a nice personal tribute by his students that we invite you to read.
New VoxEU column on "right-wing populism in the tropics"
Right-wing populism in the tropics: The rise of Jair BolsonaroLaura Barros, Manuel Santos Silva
Brazil plunged into economic crisis between 2014 and 2018, the year when far-right populist Jair Bolsonaro won the presidential election. This column, part of the Vox debate on populism, argues that Bolsonaro’s surprising victory is partially explained by the way the economic crisis interacted with prevailing gender norms. In regions where men experience larger employment losses, there is an increase in the share of votes for Bolsonaro. In contrast, in regions where women experience larger losses, his vote share is relatively lower. This may be explained by men feeling more compelled to vote for a figure that embodies masculine stereotypes as a way of compensating for a decline in economic and social status.
Full text: https://voxeu.org/article/right-wing-populism-tropics-rise-jair-bolsonaro
Krisztina Kis-Katos receives Teaching Award for best PhD-course in the RTG 1723
The teaching award was based on student evaluations and was given for her course on "Applied Development Microeconometrics", held in summer 2018 for doctoral students of the Research Training Group on "Globalization and Development" (RTG 1723).Oxford Göttingen conversation on Brexit
Christoph Weisser participated in a debate on Brexit between scholars of the Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes and students from the University of Oxford.Further information can be found in an article of the Göttinger Tageblatt [Link]. The discussion is available as a podcast at University of Oxford Podcasts [Link] and iTunes [Link].
Elías Cisneros receives the Prize for best doctoral thesis at ZEF of the years 2014 to 2017
The Center for Development Research (ZEF) at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, and the "Friends of ZEF" awarded Elías Cisneros with the prize for the best dissertation at ZEF of the years 2014-2017. His dissertation titled "The impact of public policies on deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon" was honored for its detailed "multi-dimensional analysis and the elaboration of policy relevant conclusions."
Foto: Center for Development research
Robert Genthner received the Karl-Brandt-Preis
We are glad to announce that Robert Genthner received the Karl-Brandt-Preis of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg for his master thesis on “The Impact of Foreign Investment Regulation in the Manufacturing Sector - Evidence from the Negative Investment List in Indonesia”.
Foto: Patrick Seeger