Member Profile for DIE, Bonn

Governance of the water-energy-food nexus for an integrated implementation of the 2030 Agenda
Understanding the conditions for coordination in the #WEFNexus is key to achieving the #2030Agenda. We provide a framework for analysing nexus governance from a polycentricity perspective, which can be useful in formulating coherent strategies for the integrated implementation of the #SDGs.

Resilience through placemaking: public spaces in Rotterdam’s climate adaptation approach
Public spaces are an often-overlooked opportunity for urban climate adaptation. It is increasingly clear that the unique role of public spaces in civic life positions them to enhance not only physical resilience, but also to enhance the type of social cohesion that helps communities bounce back.

Wie die USA den Schaden an den Vereinten Nationen beheben können
Biden has announced that “America is back”. To repair some of the damage at the UN, Biden already pledged to re-join the Paris climate change agreement and preserve American membership in, and financing to, the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Populist radical right parties and European development policy: politicising the migration-development nexus?
Populist radical right parties (PRRPs) have become a permanent feature of many party systems in European countries. Their electoral success has increased since 2015, when many migrants and refugees came to the EU. Research on PRRPs suggests that they contribute to the politicization of some domestic public policy domains, such as asylum and immigration policy. However, we know relatively little about PRRP’s influence on foreign policy, particularly on development policy and foreign aid. Building on a new dataset that analyses government positions and coalition agreements across European countries since the early 1990s, our recent article explores how PRRPs influence the salience and framing of the nexus between development aid and migration by European governments. More specifically, we look at whether government programmes mention the relationship between migration policy and development aid, and how these documents frame this relationship in terms of whether and how development aid should contribute to the achievement of migration policy objectives and vice versa.

The social value of health insurance: results from Ghana
We use the roll-out of the national health insurance in Ghana to assess the cushioning effect of coverage on the financial consequences of health shocks and resulting changes in coping behaviors. We find a strong reduction in medical expenditures, preventing households from cutting non-food consumption and causing a decrease in the volume of received remittances as well as labor supply of healthy adult household members. Moreover, we present evidence that the insurance scheme reduced the likelihood that households experiencing a health shock pulled their children out of school in order to put them to work. Avoidance of such costly coping mechanisms is potentially an important part of the social value of formal health insurance. The social value of formal insurance can be high despite small consumption responses.

Cling together, swing together: the contagious effects of COVID‐19 on developing countries through global value chains
This paper aims at estimating the economic vulnerability of developing countries to disruptions in global value chains (GVCs) due to the COVID‐19 pandemic. It uses trade in value added data for a sample of 12 developing countries in sub‐Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America to assess their dependence on demand and supply from the three main hubs China, Europe, and North America. Using first estimates on COVID‐19‐induced changes in final demand and production, we obtain an early projection of the GDP effect during the lockdowns that runs through trade in GVCs. Our estimates reveal that adverse demand‐side effects reduce GDP up to 5.4 percent, and that collapsing foreign supply puts an even larger share of countries’ GDP at risk. Overall, we confirm conjecture that the countries most affected are those highly integrated in GVCs (South‐East Asian countries). We argue, however, that these countries also benefit from a well‐diversified portfolio of foreign suppliers and demand destinations, possibly leading to a cushioning of economic downswing because COVID‐19 stroke major hubs at different times.

Welche Rolle spielt die Wissenschaft im “Superjahr 2021“?
Das „Superjahr 2021“ hat keine geringere Aufgabe als zum historischen Wendepunkt zu werden: Covid-19-Bewältigung, wirtschaftliche und gesellschaftliche Genesung, Umwelt- und Klimapolitik