Partners

The Göttingen Graduate School of Social Sciences (GGG) is designed for PhD students and supervisors of social sciences.

The Research Training Group, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), started in October 2010. It aims to develop solutions to problems of scale that arise in areas of current scientifi c and public interest. This comprises the identifi cation of adequate methods, their modifi cation, and the development of new statistical models and methodology.

Global agri-food systems are undergoing a rapid transformation towards higher-value products, higher quality and food safety standards, and a higher degree of international and vertical integration. This is largely driven by changing consumer preferences and new opportunities for the agribusiness sector arising from globalization processes. Developing countries in particular face technical and institutional constraints, potentially impeding successful participation in emerging value chains. This will have implications for poverty and rural development. The innovation of the GlobalFood Research Training Group (RTG) is to take a broad interdisciplinary perspective.

Reducing poverty in developing countries, the central challenge to meet the internationally agreed Millennium Development Goals, requires a better understanding of poverty dynamics and the policy drivers affecting poverty reduction. Research at the Research Centre 'Poverty, Equity and Growth in Developing Countries' focuses on the statistical and econometric analysis of the dynamics of income and non-income poverty and inequality, as well as the policy determinants of poverty change.

The objective of this project is to extend the panel household surveys in Thailand and Vietnam for another nine years (six waves of rural household and two waves for migrant surveys) to generate a much deeper understanding of income and poverty dynamics in rural areas of rapidly changing emerging economies. This is to be achieved by providing high-quality data and making them accessible to an international community of researchers, and by pursuing aspects of this research agenda as part of this project. The project promotes significant advances in researching development and agricultural economics with the assistance of high-profile research groups worldwide by facilitating data access and providing advice. The panel project uses the outcomes of DFG FOR 756.