Sebastian Krantz

Sebastian studied Liberal Arts & Science in The Netherlands (UCR) with a major in social science (economics, anthropology, IR) and minors in mathematics and statistics. He did his masters in International Economics at the Geneva Graduate Institute (IHEID), focussing on macroeconomics, trade and development economics, with a dissertation entitled „Endogenous R&D and Technology Diffusion in a Multi-Sector RBC Economy“.

This was followed by a 2-year engagement as ODI Fellow in the Macroeconomic Policy Department of the Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development of Uganda, where he contributed to macroeconomic models and revenue forecasts, digitalization and data science training. He also authored two research papers on „Global Value Chains and the EAC“ and „Macroeconomic Dynamics and the Effects of Fiscal Spending in Uganda“.

At the Kiel Institute Sebastian is a Junior Researcher since October 2021, as part of the Africa Initiative. He has authored a study on macroeconomic stability in Africa and built the Africa Monitor: a platform to disseminate macroeconomic data and communicate Africa-focused research through accessible data stories. He is currently working on better understanding the role of infrastructure for Africa's economic development, using granular geospatial data and ML methods. 

In his free time he develops high performance (C/C++ based) software libraries for the R language for statistical computing.