Social Policy and Inclusion
Growth & Poverty Reduction in Open Economies
Sustainable Energy and Food
Qualitative/Quantitative Methods
Contact Quantitative Methods: Dr. Elkhan Sadik-Zada
Contact Qualitative Methods: Dr. Anne Siebert
Research activities by the members of Cluster 1 address the full spectrum of social policy. This spectrum is understood as ranging from aspects of social security and welfare to labour, education, health, food or housing policies. Also, it concerns normative principles of social rights, justice, redistribution and inclusiveness. The broader aim is to understand the political economy of social policies, rights and respective instruments in the so called developing world by bringing together different empirical, disciplinary and methodological insights and perspectives.
In light of this research agenda, Cluster members study the role of specific policies and instruments, e.g. cash transfers, normative and human rights considerations, national and international law, patterns of cooperation and institutional arrangements in national, local or bi- and multilateral contexts.
Research Cluster 2 studies the effectiveness of policies supporting FDI, trade and sectoral formalization, and of approaches for implementing social security schemes, labour regulations and minimum wages to support growth- and poverty-relevant outcomes.
Research projects in this cluster explicitly or implicitly acknowledge the existence of productivity and income differentials between and within sectors of the economy. This allows for studying the impacts sectoral interactions bring about for economic growth and poverty, for investigating how policies affect these interactions, and for explaining why different sectors of the economy react differently vis-à-vis to policy interventions.
Using macro as well as micro perspectives, cluster projects provide theoretical and empirical insights into sectoral transformation, into the interplay between FDI, ODA, labour regulations and infrastructure investment, and job creation, growth and poverty at the level of the economy, the sector and the firm.
Research Cluster 3 focuses on topics that address the questions of natural resource use in developing countries through the lens of sustainable development.
Research projects within the cluster envisage cutting through the complexity of interactions between natural resource use, environmental quality, and socio-economic development and vice versa address the impact of climate change on these three pillars.
Thematically, research on the productivity and environmental sustainability of rural and urban (subsistence) farming and the respective food value chains and works related to the rollout of renewable energy sources play a substantial role within the framework of the research activities of this cluster. The projects address the research questions from micro and/or macro perspectives applying a broad toolbox of theories and methods.
