Re­search

The re­search con­duct­ed at the Zurich Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment cov­ers all key ar­eas of de­vel­op­ment eco­nom­ics. Our af­fil­i­at­ed pro­fes­sors con­duct em­pir­i­cal eval­u­a­tions to test and im­prove the ef­fec­tive­ness of pro­grams and poli­cies aimed at fa­cil­i­tat­ing the al­le­vi­a­tion of pover­ty and build­ing pros­per­i­ty in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries.

Ac­cord­ing to the most re­cent es­ti­mates, more than 10 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion live on less than US$1.90 a day, which is be­low the World Bank’s new in­ter­na­tion­al pover­ty line. This lack of ma­te­r­i­al re­sources has far-reach­ing con­se­quences. For ex­am­ple, peo­ple in Africa die on av­er­age 21 years ear­li­er than in Eu­rope, a third of the pop­u­la­tion can nei­ther read nor write, and many chil­dren suf­fer from growth dis­or­ders. Eco­nom­ic pover­ty fre­quent­ly means a life of un­cer­tain­ty and scarci­ty, pre­ma­ture death, and lim­it­ed per­spec­tives. At the same time, re­cent decades have seen in­cred­i­ble im­prove­ments in the qual­i­ty of life in de­vel­op­ing coun­tries. World pover­ty is at an all-time low, child and ma­ter­nal death rates have fall­en by half since 1990, life ex­pectan­cy is grow­ing steadi­ly, and lit­er­a­cy rates and ed­u­ca­tion lev­els are in­creas­ing tremen­dous­ly. At the same time, the num­ber of chil­dren and cor­re­spond­ing pop­u­la­tion growth are falling. All of these de­vel­op­ments rep­re­sent tremen­dous op­por­tu­ni­ties world­wide. At the same time, emerg­ing mar­kets in low- and mid­dle-in­come coun­tries still face big chal­lenges and a large gap re­mains for them to reach the lev­els of wel­fare en­joyed in the rich part of the world.

The goal of the Cen­ter is to study poli­cies and in­ter­ven­tions that help fur­ther pro­mote and grow these pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments. Re­searchers at the Zurich Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment ap­ply cut­ting-edge, rig­or­ous eco­nom­ic meth­ods to the study of these top­ics. They work with pol­i­cy mak­ers, non-prof­it or­ga­ni­za­tions and busi­ness lead­ers from around the world to an­a­lyze is­sues rang­ing from ac­cess to mi­cro­fi­nance for low-in­come en­tre­pre­neurs, to im­prov­ing mar­kets for med­ica­tion by re­duc­ing the prob­lem of coun­ter­feit pills, to in­sti­tu­tion­al reme­dies for pre­vent­ing cor­rup­tion and tax eva­sion or the his­tor­i­cal ori­gin of eco­nom­ic growth and de­vel­op­ment. Many re­search projects in­volve un­der­stand­ing the role of the in­sti­tu­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment and its ef­fect on both the struc­ture of mar­ket forces and the be­hav­ior of pol­i­cy mak­ers, cit­i­zens, en­tre­pre­neurs and con­sumers. While the re­search projects at the Cen­ter cov­er a large num­ber of top­ics, they share a com­mon goal of ex­cel­lence through the high-qual­i­ty use of rig­or­ous, ad­vanced eco­nom­ic meth­ods.

Pub­li­ca­tions

To help dis­sem­i­nate re­search pro­duced by the Cen­ter’s re­searchers, the Zurich Cen­ter for Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment pro­vides ac­cess to all pub­li­ca­tions re­lat­ed with the Cen­ter’s re­search projects (list­ed in chrono­log­i­cal or­der).