Dr. Manuela Fritz
Technical University Munich
School of Social Sciences and Technology
I am a post-doctoral researcher at the Technical University Munich (TUM), where I am affiliated with the Professorship of Global Health (Prof. Janina Steinert) and the Professorship of Public Policy for the Green Transition (Prof. Florian Egli). I hold a post-doctoral fellowship funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG Walter-Benjamin Fellowship).
Before I came to Munich, I worked at the at the Department for Economics, Econometrics and Finance at the University of Groningen (Netherlands) and at the Chair of Development Economics at the University of Passau (Germany) where I also obtained my PhD under a joint doctoral program. For my dissertation, I received the KfW Development Bank's award for practice-relevant development research and the Helmut-Schmalen Dissertation award.
In my current DFG-funded project Mercury Rising, I investigate the consequences of climate change for global health, and explore innovate and cost-effective solutions for climate adaptation. More broadly, my research lies at the intersection of health economics and development economics and mainly contributes to improving public health and health care systems in low- and middle-income countries. Other strands of my research cover projects related to agriculture economics and behavioral economics, for example, I am involved in a project revolving around social networks and peer effects in the context of agricultural technology adoption in Indonesia, in an RCT aiming to reduce violence of teachers against children in Tanzania, and in a lab-in-the-field experiment in Bolivia aiming to re-design loan contracts of microfinance institutions
In my works, I apply micro-economic and -econometric methods and rely on insurance data, social network data, geospatial data, climate simulation and health simulation models, as well as primary data collected in the field via household surveys, online surveys, and lab-in-the-field experiments.
Research Interests
Development Economics, Health Economics, Agriculture Economics
Methods
Applied microeconomics
Impact evaluation; causal inference
Social network analysis
Survey research
RCTs, lab-in-the-field
Topics
Non-communicable diseases
Health effects of climate change
Innovate solutions for climate adaptation
Insurance and microfinance
Network and peer effects in agriculture