Gbenoukpo Robert Djidonou


PhD fellow

Research group(s):
2. Structural Change and Economic Development
1. Economics of Knowledge and Innovation
3. Economic Complexity and Innovation
8. Population, Development and Labour Economics
7. Social Protection

Robert is a Ph.D. fellow at UNU-MERIT.  He earned his Master of Science in Mathematics-Economics-Statistics (MMES), cum laude from African School of Economics (ASE), Benin in 2016 and an Advanced Master in International and Development Economics (AMIDE), cum laude co-organized by  Universite Catholique de Louvain (UCL) and University of Namur, Belgium in 2017.  Before joining UNU-MERIT, he worked as lecturer and researcher at the African School of Economics, where he taught Macroeconomics, Econometrics, and Operations Research for MBA students and was involved in several research projects in its Institute for Empirical Research in Political Economy (IERPE) in several countries in Africa.

Since 2019, Robert is a lecturer of Microeconomics and Economics to First-Year Ph.D. students at UNU-MERIT. Furthermore, he is tutoring among other Econometrics, Networks Economics of Innovations to Master students at UNU-MERIT, and SBE (Maastricht University).

The focus of his PhD thesis is on Formal-Informal Firm Value Chains, Knowledge Transfer, Industrialization And Economic Growth in low-income countries.

His research interests cover economic growth and development, trade and globalization, structural change, institutional change, human capital formation and innovation in developing countries.




Selected publications by Gbenoukpo Robert Djidonou


UNU-MERIT Working Papers
Djidonou, Gbenoukpo Robert & Neil Foster-McGregor, 2020, Stagnant manufacturing growth in India: The role of the informal economy, UNU-MERIT Working Paper 2020-041


UNU-MERIT