Poverty and inequality persist in many dimensions in the developing world. In order to understand the determinants of poverty and its distribution between and within countries, it is necessary to know its dimensions and the channels through which poverty and inequality affect human well-being....

Female labor force participation rates in urban India between 1987 and 2011 are surprisingly low and have stagnated since the late 1980s. Despite rising growth, fertility decline, and rising wages and education levels, married women's labor force participation hovered around 18 percent. Analysis...

The nature of food insecurity has been changing in the world. While research on food insecurity in developing countries used to focus on undernourishment (i.e. lack of calorie consumption) and related outcomes, today, many developing countries face at least a “double burden of malnutrition”...

There are arguably few topics in current global economic policy as intensely debated as the impact of different facets of globalization on human development. Given that the concept of globalization reflects a multitude of economic and societal transformations, the scope of these discussions...

Violent conflict is common among the poorest countries and clearly one of the most important barriers to growth, destroying physical, human, and social capital, often in the long run. At the same time, it is a development `trap' that is not easy to escape from as poverty has also been found to...

This dissertation includes three empirical essays on development economics and one on the economics of education. The first essay (co-authored by Stephan Klasen) is a contribution to the debate surrounding the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the on-going debate about what international...

This dissertation contains three essays at the interface of agricultural and development economics. The motivation for this lies in the fact that various studies have shown the agricultural sector to be the main income source for the majority of the global poor and it will hence have to play a...

Zusammenfassung Die drei Essays dieser Dissertation leisten einen Beitrag zum Verständnis der politischen Ökonomie Indonesiens in Zeiten der Dezentralisierung. Vor dem Hintergrund des "Urban Poverty Project 2" (UPP2), einem kommunalen Entwicklungsprojekt in Indonesien, untersucht der erste...