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Groningen Growth and Development Centre
Faculty of Economics and Business
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Overview Projects

Projects

The Groningen Growth and Development Centre has been involved in several research projects. Comparative analysis of levels of economic performance and differences in growth rates have been the main field of research. Most of these projects are undertaken in close collaboration with other institutes.

Below a non-exhaustive list is presented of projects undertaken by the GGDC in the recent past, as well as projects that are currently still running or expected to begin in the near future. The projects are organized along the four GGDC research domains: Productivity, Global Value Chains, Historical Development, and Structural Change.

Projects in Productivity research



PWT

The Next Generation of the Penn World Table
Project coordinator: Robert Feenstra
Description: “This collaborative proposal aims to consolidate and advance both the empirical and theoretical aspects of international comparisons of income, expenditure and production” (funded by the US National Science Foundation and Sloan Foundation)
Duration: 2011-2017

INDICSER

Indicators for evaluating international performance in service sectors
Project Coordinators: Mary O'Mahony and Marcel Timmer
Description: Indicators for evaluating international performance in service sectors (INDICSER). Funded by the European Commission.
Duration: 2009-2012

PWT

Improving and Extending Penn World Tables
Project Coordinators: Robert Feenstra and Alan Heston
Description: “Improved Methods of Estimating Production and Income Across Nations” and “Integrating Expenditure and Production Estimates in International Comparisons” (both funded by US National Science Foundation).
Duration: 2004-2010

EU KLEMS

Project Coordinators: Bart van Ark, Mary O'Mahony and Marcel Timmer
Description: Productivity in the European Union: A Comparative Industry Approach (funded through the Sixth Framework Programme of the European Union).
Duration: 2003-2008

IGA

Industry Growth Accounting Database
Project Coordinators: Bart van Ark and Mary O'Mahony
Description: For the Industry Growth Accounting Database, data on labour skills (three categories) and investment and capital services (3 ICT asset categories and 3 non-ICT categories) have been constructed for Australia, Canada, the US and 4 European countries (France, Germany, The Netherlands and the UK) in addition to the output and labour input estimates from the 60-industry Database.
Duration: 2002-2006

EPKE

Employment Prospects in the Knowledge Economy
Project Coordinators: Bart van Ark and Mary O'Mahony
Description: EU Performance Analysis of the EU Economy from the Point of View of its Industrial Sectors (funded through the Fifth Framework Programme of the European Union).
Duration: 2000-2003

TEG

Technology and Economic Growth
Project Coordinators: Bart van Ark, Erik Dietzenbacher and Bart Verspagen
Description: NWO (Netherlands Science Foundation) project on “Technology and Economic Growth”.
Duration: 2000-2004

ICOP

International Comparison of Output and Productivity by industry
Project Coordinators: Bart van Ark, Angus Maddison and Marcel Timmer
Description: International Comparisons of Output and Productivity by Industry project. This long-standing project to carry out industry of origin comparisons of sectoral output and productivity across countries has evolved over the past decades. Parts of the project has been sponsored amongst other by The Conference Board, FAO, International Labour Office (ILO) and the European Commission.
Duration: 1983-1990

Projects in Global Value Chains research



Modelling Global Value Chains

Project Coordinators: Marcel Timmer
Description: A new framework to study trade, jobs and income inequality in an interdependent world. This project is funded by the NWO (Netherlands Science Foundation).
Duration: 2015-2020 | Database

WIOD

World Input-Output Database
Project Coordinators: Erik Dietzenbacher, Bart Los and Marcel Timmer
Description: World Input-Output Database: Construction and Applications (Funded through the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Union).
Duration: 2009-2012 | Database

Projects in Historical Development research


ICT Innovation Project

Project Coordinators: Abe de Jong and Herman de Jong
Description: Professors Abe de Jong and Herman de Jong received a grant of 160,000 euro for a UG ICT Innovation Fund Proposal titled Digitization of printed registries to structured data. The project’s idea is to deliver a machine learning-powered online platform to extract structured information from scanned source material. The tool will be able to handle data published as printed registries, e.g. securities, trade statistics, population and production censuses, patent data etc. to enable research on such data. These sources can easily cover tens of thousands of pages. Currently, scanned or digitized versions may be obtained using existing OCR tools. But they often give scanned information as unstructured text or as paragraphs ill-suited for interpretation in the form as tables or statistics. The proposed tool will instead produce output as ordered spreadsheet data of ready-for-research output. The project will be developed together with colleagues from the UG CIT.
Duration: 2024-

Gauging Past Performance

Project Coordinators: Herman de Jong
Description: Creating Financial Metadata for Economics, Finance, and Economic History in the Netherlands. This project is funded by the Platform Digital Infrastructure Social Sciences and Humanities.
Duration: 2020-2024

Taking Stock

Project Coordinators: Herman de Jong
Description: Investigating the function of the Amsterdam stock exchange during a highly dynamic period of growth, structural change, and crisis, 1870-1940. This project is funded by the NWO (Netherlands Science Foundation).
Duration: 2020-2024

The African population boom in historical perspective

Project Coordinator: Jutta Bolt
Description: This project aims to present African population growth patterns for the period 1820-1960, using thus far unexplored missionary records. This project is financially supported by The Wallenberg Foundations.
Duration: 2017-2022 | Website

AFLIT

African Long term Inequality Trends
Project Coordinator: Jutta Bolt
Description: Research network dedicated to constructing social tables for the advancement in mapping, estimating and analysing historical economic inequality trends in the sub-Sahara African region. This project is financially supported by The Wallenberg Foundations and the Swedish Research Council.
Duration: 2015-2021 | Website

Pessimism and Prosperity

The welfare paradox of interwar Europe in a global perspective.
Project Coordinators: Herman de Jong
Description: The welfare paradox of interwar Europe in a global perspective. This project is funded by the NWO (Netherlands Science Foundation).
Duration: 2013-2018

Modern Times

European Capitalism in the Second Industrial Revolution 1900-1950
Project Coordinators: Herman de Jong
Description: European Capitalism in the Second Industrial Revolution 1900-1950. This project is funded by the NWO (Netherlands Science Foundation).
Duration: 2009-2013 | Website

HNA

Historical National Accounts
Project Coordinators: Jutta Bolt
Description: The datahub on Comparative Historical National Accounts provides information on Gross Domestic Product, including an industry breakdown, for the period ca. 1870-1950. This project is funded by the NWO (Netherlands Science Foundation) and the European Science Foundation (ESF).
Duration: 2005-2007

Projects in Structural Change research



STEG

Structural Transformation and Economic Growth
Project Coordinators: Gaaitzen de Vries and Robert Inklaar
Description: STEG is a research initiative funded by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office that aims to provide a better understanding of structural change, productivity and growth in low- and middle-income countries.
Duration: 2020-202x | External website


ETD

Economic Transformation Database
Project Coordinators: Gaaitzen de Vries
Description: Funded by UNU World Institute for Development Economics Research. To develop the GGDC/UNU-WIDER Economic Transformation Database (ETD), which provides comprehensive, long-term, and internationally comparable sectoral data on employment and productivity in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Duration: 2019-2021


SCAD

Structural Change and Productivity Growth in Africa
Project Coordinators: Marcel Timmer and Gaaitzen de Vries
Description: A harmonised long-term sectoral dataset for countries in Africa to study growth-enhancing structural transformation. Funded by DFID/ESRC.
Duration: April 2012 - June 2014 | Database

Last modified:06 February 2024 11.39 a.m.