Dr. Juliane Zenker

Dr. Juliane Zenker is a Senior Research at the Chair of Development Economics of Prof. Dr. Andreas Fuchs and a Dorothea-Schlözer Fellow at the Department of Economics. Her research is in development economics, focusing on household decision-making with applications to labor markets, financial inclusion, social protection, and sustainable development. The unique obstacles women face in escaping poverty are a focal theme in her work. In her studies, Juliane uses field experiments and quasi-experiments combined with machine learning tools to learn about the welfare effects of policies and interventions.

Dr. Zenker is a Principal Investigator of several large-scale government-led policy evaluations facilitated by the World Bank in Afghanistan and other (post-)conflict settings. She has experience implementing social and behavioral interventions and lab-in-the-field experiments in Thailand, India, and Afghanistan. She has co-managed large-scale data collections in South and Southeast Asia.

Dr. Zenker's research is published in leading field journals like the Journal of Development Economics, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, and World Bank Economic Review.

Her research is currently supported by the Joachim Herz Foundation and two research grants from the South Asia Gender Innovation Lab at the World Bank. Juliane received her doctoral degree in Economics from the University of Göttingen in its DFG-funded Research Training Group "Globalization and Development.“ After defending her thesis she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Chair of Prof. Dr. h.c. Stephan Klasen, PhD. In Spring 2020, Juliane was a Visiting Scholar at the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at UC Berkeley.