Promoting Global Health and Fighting Poverty

29 September 2021, Aura Zurich

To ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals promoted by the United Nations. The COVID-19 pandemic and its disastrous effects for the poor adds to the challenge of providing essential health services for all human beings. How can we promote health and alleviate poverty in developing countries?

Development economist Michael Kremer (University of Chicago) has introduced a new approach for obtaining reliable answers to this question. It involves dividing this issue into smaller, more manageable questions – an experimental approach for which he and his colleagues Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo were awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize in Economics.

Michael Kremer has been able to test a range of interventions using field experiments since the mid-1990s, for example for improving educational outcomes or child health. Kremer questions general recipes for development aid – neither the complete rejection of all financial aid nor the glorification of development aid as the only way out of the debt trap for African countries are worthwhile. His focus is on evidence – that is, on whether a measure makes sense economically and for the health of those affected. “I see my role as providing that evidence,” explains Kremer.

17:30
Door Opening

18:00
Welcome Address
Ernst Fehr, Professor of Economics, University of Zurich

18:10
Keynote: Promoting Global Health and Fighting Poverty
Nobel Laureate Michael Kremer, Professor of Economics, University of Chicago

19:15
Dinner and Research Slam
A glimpse into a selection of the Department of Economics’ research projects

ca. 21:30
End of Event

Aura
Bleicherweg 5
8001 Zurich

www.aura-zurich.ch

Excellence Foundation Zurich
for Economic and Social Research
Schönberggasse 1
CH-8001 Zurich

Sally Peggs
+41 44 634 57 99
sally.peggs@econ.uzh.ch