Sebastian Krantz

Sebastian 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 (PhD student) since October 2021, as part of the Africa Initiative. He wrote a paper on macroeconomic stabilization in Africa and built the Africa Monitor: a platform to disseminate macroeconomic data and communicate Africa-focused research through accessible data stories. He then did significant work on better understanding the role of infrastructure for Africa's economic development, using granular geospatial data and causal ML methods. His final project characterizes spatially optimal investments in Africa's road network using rich geospatial data, routing engines, and quantitative spatial models. He is a job market candidate interested in infrastructure policy and spatial planning.

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