Affiliated scientists and scholars
Dr. Edward Asiedu
Dr. Edward Asiedu is a development economist and a faculty at the University of Ghana Business School (UGBS) where he teaches courses in the evaluation of pro-poor development policies and intervention. He is currently a Guest Associate Professor at the Institute Of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp, Belgium. He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Göttingen, Germany, and an M.A. in Economics from the University of Guelph, Ontario Canada. He is also an Invited Researcher at The Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) since 2021.
Edward is also a research fellow at the Chair of Development Economics at the University of Passau in Germany and holds research affiliate positions on projects at the Center for Development and Cooperation (NADEL) ETH Zurich, Switzerland (with Prof. Isabel Guenther), Centre for Experimental Social Sciences (CESS) at the Nuffield College University of Oxford (with Prof. Ray Duch) andthe Global Poverty Research Lab at the University of Northwestern (with Prof. Chris Udry).
Edward's research interest lies in the design and evaluation of pro-poor development projects and interventions in the broad areas of development economics, development finance, agricultural finance, experimental economics, and migration and remittances data analysis. Overall, his main research interest and passion lie in the design and evaluation of interventions that have the potential of reducing poverty and inequality.
In terms of current research, among others he has received grants to examine how digital business training can impact the outcomes of small businesses in Ghana (International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Canada), to examine ways by which theGhana national identification and digital payment systems can help to nudge informal pension contributions in Ghana (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through JPAL), to evaluate interventions that can incentivize mobile money-based health insurance renewal (Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through JPAL), to examine how pre-financing tractor services for poor households can improve household welfare in Northern Ghana (Christopher Udry and Dean Karlan, Northwestern), to examine the impact of networking and legal support on women businesses in the middle of a pandemic (Private Enterprise Development in Low-Income Countries (PEDL) and Weiss Fund for Research in Development Economics), to examine the impact of free electricity meters on welfae in poor slum households in Ghana (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Environment for Development (EfD)), how to incentivize vaccine uptake in rural Ghana (University of Oxford and Hitotsubashi Institute for Advanced Study, Japan) and to evaluate information campaigns aimed to reduce out-of-pocket health expenditures among the poor (OOPE) (Swiss Programme for Research on Global Issues for Development (r4d programme)).
He has presented his work at a number of important international conferences, such as the University of Oxford’s Centre for the Study of African Economies (CSAE) conference on Africa’s development, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Boston, PEGNET Development Conference in ETH Zurich Switzerland, Canadian Economics Association (CEA) conference in Nova Scotia Canada, Economic Development Conference at the University of Wisconsin -Madison, the Economic Science Association (ESA) Conference at the University of California, Santa Cruz, etc. He is a member of the Economic Science Association and the Canadian Economics Association. He has published his work in journals including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Review of Income and Wealth, World Development, World Development Perspective, Review of Development Economics, International Journal of Development Issues, etc.
As part of his international and community service, has consulted for a number of international organization on different projects. In 2022 he consulted for the World Bank on how to improve service delivery in the public sector in Ghana (World Bank). In 2021, he also consulted for the World Bank on collecting household and firm-level data to inform policy (World Bank and Ghana Statistical Service). From 2018 to 2019 he consulted for the European Union on improving resilience against climate change (REACH-European Union and IWMI). In 2018 He also worked for the FAO on evaluating the Ghana Medium-Term Agricultural Sector Investment Programme (METASIP), METASIP I & II Evaluation. In 2017, he consulted for the World Bank on income tax mobilization and non-compliance in Ghana (World Bank). Also, for the same year, he worked as a consultant for the World Bank on district governments’ tax collection and expenditure allocation towards the provision of public goods in Ghana. He has consulted for the GIZ on a number of development financing projects as a national expert. The specific project he has worked on, inter alia, for the GIZ includes the evaluation of the “Farmer Business School Training Programmme”, and the baseline for linking smallholder farmers to high-value markets “MOAP- Market linkages programme”. Edward has also worked as the lead consultant for the GIZ and the Ministry of Finance (MoF) (GIZ-MoF joint project) in analyzing data and writing the financial sector diagnostic report for 2018, which captured trends in the financial sector and trends in mobile money transfers in Ghana.
In 2022 he served as a grant reviewer for the IDRC grant 2022- 2033 grant cycle. In terms of training public sector officers across Africa, in 2022 in Abuja, he served as a trainer for public sector workers across Africa on Evaluating Social Programs in Africa, organized for J-PAL, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Also in 2022, he served as a trainer in Accra on how to design and run Randomized Development Evaluations (Impact Evaluation) for public sector policy actors in Ghana, organized and funded by the London School of Economics and the International Growth Centre (IGC). He also served as a speaker at the 2021 Jobs and Opportunity Initiative (JOI) African Scholars Program, a Grant program organized by the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
In his spare time, he likes walking, running, playing football (soccer), and playing squash.
You can contact him at edasiedu@ug.edu.gh
Dr. Nicolas Büttner
Nicolas Büttner earned a PhD in Development Economics and a master’s degree in Development Studies at the University of Passau. He worked as Research Associate at the Chair of Development Economics from October 2017 to March 2022. His research activities have a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa and include the measurement of inequality, the economics of crime and conflict, and the analysis of population dynamics. In his research, he combines survey and census data with increasingly available remote sensing data, such as satellite imagery, and applies methods from empirical microeconometrics as well as geospatial analysis.
Since April 2022, Nicolas Büttner works as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Development Economics Group of the ETH Zurich.
You can contact him at nicolas.buettner@nadel.ethz.ch
Dr. Manuela Fritz
Manuela Fritz has earned her PhD in Economics from the University of Passau and the University of Groningen (Netherlands). She worked as a research assistant and associate at the Chair of Development Economics from 2019-2023. Her research lies at the intersection of health economics and development economics and contributes to innovative solutions for improving public health and health care systems in low- and middle-income countries. The focus lies in particular on cost-effective solutions for the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases and the investigation of the health consequences of climate change.
In her works, she applies micro-economic and -econometric methods and relies on insurance data, social network data, geospatial data, climate simulation and health simulation models, as well as primary data collected in the field via household surveys.
Since April 2023, Manuela Fritz works as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
You can contact her at m.k.fritz@rug.nl and for more information about her projects and research see manuelafritz.net.
Renate Hartwig PhD
Renate Hartwig has earned her PhD at Erasmus University Rotterdam in 2014, and has been awarded an ESR research fellowship at Paris School of Economics. Her research interests are Development Economics, Health and Population Economics, Welfare Economics and Econometrics. Her thesis evaluates various components of a cash transfer and public works program in Rwanda (VUP).
She holds a Master in Development Studies from the International Institute of Social Studies (Erasmus University Rotterdam) and a Master from the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). Moreover, she has completed with distinction the European Doctoral School of Demography (EDSD) of which the course work took place in Lund and Rostock.
For more information please visit renatehartwig.com and her list of publications there.
Dr. Ann-Kristin Reitmann
Ann-Kristin Reitmann conducted her doctoral studies in Development Economics at the University of Passau, where she also worked as a Research Associate from May 2016 to September 2020. Her doctoral thesis consisted of four empirical essays on the determinants, consequences and measurement of social norms and individual attitudes in a developing country context (Burkina Faso, Tunisia and Colombia). Moreover, she holds a Master of Science in Economics from the University of Cologne.
In November 2020, she started her position as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Health Economics of the Leibniz University of Hannover.
You can contact her at ann-kristin.reitmann@ihe.uni-hannover.de.