Konstantin M. Wacker

Lead Economist for Development Strategy
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Asia and the Pacific
Associate Professor of Macroeconomics, Webster Vienna Private University (on leave)

firstname dot lastname [at] webster/ac/at

CV Research

Economic growth, productivity, and technology

Accounting for cross-country differences in output per worker: a sectoral CES perspective

with Jan Trenczek

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 2026
How important is human capital misallocation across sectors for aggregate productivity differences? Evidence beyond Cobb-Douglas

with Jan Trenczek

Macroeconomic Dynamics, forthcoming
Good Enough for outstanding growth: The experience of Bangladesh in comparative perspective

with Robert C.M. Beyer

Development Policy Review, 2024
Drivers of growth accelerations: What role for capital accumulation?

with Eline Koopman

World Development, 2023
The Rise of Robots and the Fall of Routine Jobs

with Gaaitzen de Vries, Elisabetta Gentile, and Sebastien Miroudot

Labour Economics, 2020
Explaining Ethiopia's Growth Acceleration—The Role of Infrastructure and Macroeconomic Policy

with Lars Christian Moller

World Development, 2017

Macroeconomic development: poverty and inequality

Foreign direct investment

Do countries need absorptive capacity to benefit from FDI? Rethinking a policy paradigm

with Amelia U. Santos Paulino

commissioned by World Development, coming soon
How does FDI transmit into domestic investment? Exploring intra-industry and financial channels

with Tim de Leeuw

Journal of Comparative Economics, 2026
Measuring multinational production with foreign direct investment statistics: A survey of challenges and recent developments

with Bruno Casella and Maria Borga

Journal of Economic Surveys, 2025
Explaining the global landscape of foreign direct investment: knowledge capital, gravity, and the role of culture and institutions

with Sophie Schneider

The World Economy, 2022
Do multinationals deteriorate developing countries' export prices? The impact of FDI on net barter terms of trade

The World Economy, 2016

Export upgrading

How (not) to estimate export quality from CES demand

with Purva N. Gole

coming soon
How can we reconcile fast export quality convergence with a stable global income distribution?

with Jan Trenczek

coming soon
Industry-level estimates of export quality accounting for global value chains

with Xianjia Ye, Dea Tusha, and Asia Celani

Nature: Scientific Data, 2025
FDI, Export Prices, and Quality Upgrading: What is so special about South Asia?

with Philipp Großkurth and Tabea Lakemann

Asian Development Review, 2016

Panel data econometrics

Heterogeneous and interaction effects in panel data – the CITE approach

with Chris Muris

commissioned paper, coming soon
Educational significance: when does it show in growth regressions?

with Sandra van Everdink

coming soon
Absorptive capacity, FDI, and growth: time-varying interaction effects vs. heterogeneity in macroeconomic fundamentals

with Chris Muris

under review; earlier version available as GGDC Research Memorandum
Estimating Interaction Effects with Panel Data

with Chris Muris

Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2026

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