Dr. Stephan Dietrich


Assistant Professor

Research group(s):
7. Social Protection
4. Governance and institutions

Stephan Dietrich is assistant professor at UNU-MERIT. In his research he uses data to measure and model the welfare effects of climatic changes and other types of economic shocks. He is particularly interested in the mitigating role of public policies in the fields of social protection, insurance markets, and taxation. His goal is to develop data driven insurance mechanisms that are effective, inclusive, and transparent. His research often uses multiple data sources such as survey data and remotely sensed imagery to provide new insights on the workings of public policies using impact evaluation, machine learning, or structural causal modeling techniques.




Selected publications by Stephan Dietrich


Articles (journal, professional, popular)
Gassmann, Franziska, Richard de Groot, Stephan Dietrich & et al., 2022, Determinants and drivers of young children's diets in Latin America and the Caribbean: Findings from a regional analysis, PLOS Global Public Health, 2(7), DOI: doi.org/10.1371/journal.pgph.0000260
Dietrich, Stephan, Aline Meysonnat, Francisco Rosales, Franziska Gassmann & Victor Cebotari, 2022, Economic Development, Weather Shocks and Child Marriage in South Asia: a Machine Learning Approach, PLOS One, Online, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0271373, More information
Malerba, Daniele, Stephan Dietrich, Franziska Gassmann & Armando Barrientos, 2021, Prioritarian rates of return to antipoverty transfers, Journal of International Development, More information
Dietrich, Stephan & Georg Schmerzeck, 2021, For real? Cash transfers’ effects on food consumption during price shocks in Kenya, Journal of Development Effectiveness, More information
Giuffrida, Valerio, Stephan Dietrich, Bruno Martorano & Georg Schmerzeck, 2021, COVID?19 policy responses, mobility, and food prices, American Journal of Agricultural Economics, More information
Dietrich, Stephan, Daniele Malerba, Armando Barrientos, Franziska Gassmann, Pierre Mohnen & Nyasha Tirivayi, 2020, Human capital returns to cash transfers in Uganda: does it matter in the long run?, Journal of Development Effectiveness, 12(1): 54-73, DOI: 10.1080/19439342.2019.1691626, More information
Dietrich, Stephan & Georg Schmerzeck, 2019, Cash transfers and nutrition: The role of market isolation after weather shocks, Food Policy, 87, More information
Dietrich, Stephan, 2017, Coping with Shocks: Impact of Insurance Payouts on Small-Scale Farmers, The Geneva Papers on Risk and Insurance - Issues and Practice, 42(2): 348-369, DOI: 10.1057/s41288-016-0035-y


UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Dietrich, Stephan, Valerio Giuffrida, Bruno Martorano, Georg Schmerzeck & Marco Tiberti, 2023, Lost in aggregation? On the importance of local food price data for food poverty estimates, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2023-035
Dietrich, Stephan, Daniele Malerba & Franziska Gassmann, 2023, Predicting social assistance beneficiaries: On the social welfare damage of data biases, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2023-007
Dietrich, Stephan & Stafford Nichols, 2023, More than a feeling: A global economic valuation of subjective wellbeing damages resulting from rising temperatures, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2023-005
Konda, Bruhan, Stephan Dietrich & Eleonora Nillesen, 2021, Does commonness fill the common fund? Experimental evidence on the role of identity for public good contributions in India, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2021-037
Dietrich, Stephan, Aline Meysonnat, Francisco Rosales, Victor Cebotari & Franziska Gassmann, 2021, Economic development, weather shocks and child marriage in South Asia: A machine learning approach, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2021-034
Dietrich, Stephan, Valerio Giuffrida, Bruno Martorano & Georg Schmerzeck, 2021, COVID-19 policy responses, mobility, and food prices: Evidence from local markets in 47 low to middle income countries, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2021-008
Dietrich, Stephan & Georg Schmerzeck, 2020, For real? Income and non-income effects of cash transfers on the demand for food, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2020-006
Dietrich, Stephan, Gonne Beekman & Eleonora Nillesen, 2018, Market integration and pro-social behaviour in rural Liberia, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2018-010
Dietrich, Stephan, Daniele Malerba, Armando Barrientos & Franziska Gassmann, 2017, Rates of return to antipoverty transfers in Uganda, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2017-040
Dietrich, Stephan, Daniele Malerba, Armando Barrientos, Franziska Gassmann, Pierre Mohnen, Nyasha Tirivayi, Susan Kavuma & Fred Matovu, 2017, Social protection investments, human capital, and income growth: Simulating the returns to social cash transfers in Uganda, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2017-029


Research reports
Okamoto, Sanae, Bartel Van de Walle, Michael Hagenlocher, Nidhi Nagabhatla, Stephan Dietrich, Jonathan Hassel, Sophie Van der Heijden, Soenke Kreft, Philippe De Lombaerde, Florence Nick, Robert Oakes, Fabien Rackelmann, Marlene Rimmert, Simone Sandholz, Zita Sebesvari, Xiaomeng Shen, Tatiana Skripka, Teodora Stojanovic, Joerg Szarzynski & Saskia E. Werners, 2023, Building Climate Resilience: Lessons from the 2021 Floods in Western Europe, In July 2021, the Rhine-Meuse region straddling Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands was affected by devastating floods that have led to the loss of more than 240 lives and damage worth billions of Euros. Drawing on our research and outcomes of the Flood Knowledge Summit 2022, the UNU Climate Resilience Initiative has identified five key areas in which further research and action is needed to tackle climate risks and facilitate pathways towards climate resilience, More information
Dietrich, Stephan, Aline Meysonnat, Victor Cebotari, Julia Reinold, Franziska Gassmann, Inez Roosen & Neil Foster-McGregor, 2018, Key Drivers of the Changing Prevalence of Child Marriage in Three Countries in South Asia, UNICEF, Kathmandu, Nepal, More information
Freudenreich, Hanna, Marcela Ibanez, Stephan Dietrich & Oliver Musshoff, 2017, Formal Insurance, Risk Sharing, and the Dynamics of other-regarding Preferences, More information
Gassmann, Franziska, Nyasha Tirivayi, Stephan Dietrich & Hanna Röth, 2016, Estimation of Rates of Return (ROR) on Social Protection Investments in Lesotho, This report was written on behalf of UNICEF Lesotho (LRPS-KMA-2015-9118790) as part of a project funded by the European Union with technical support provided by UNICEF and implemented under the guidance of the Ministry of Social Development, 66, More information


Briefs
Dietrich, Stephan & Franziska Gassmann, 2018, Rates of Return to Social Protection: Social Cash Transfers in Uganda, UNU Policy Brief, Number 2, 2018, More information


UNU-MERIT