Por cortesía del Investigador Prometeo Ph.D José Luis Pantoja, presentamos la información relacionada con la oferta de dos becas para estudiar Economía Agrícola en Alemania y Chile.

2 Scholarships for the Ph.D. Program in Agricultural Economics

This is a Joint Program between Universidad de Talca (Chile) & Georg-August University of Göttingen (Germany.)

The Georg-August-University of Göttingen (Germany) and Universidad de Talca (Chile), through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), are offering an English-language Joint Ph.D. Program in Agricultural Economics (JPPAE).

During the first year, students in the program attend courses in the Ph.D. Program in Agricultural Economics in Göttingen (IPAG) and the“Promotionskolleg Agrarökonomik“, (http://www.agraroekonomik.de). During the second year, students continue their activities at the University of Talca (Chile) or the University of Göttingen (Germany), depending on their specific research topics. Students spend the third year of the program in Talca (Chile) completing their Ph.D.-theses and publications.

DAAD will award three-year Ph.D.-scholarships to two (2) outstanding applicants to participate in the program beginning in December 2014. The scholarships will cover monthly expenses, tuition, registration, but tuitionfees are not covered.

We are looking for Ph.D. candidates who are interested in topics in the field of applied agricultural economics related to Chile and the European Union. If you want to apply, please refer one of the following topics:

1. Reliability of Certification Schemes in the Global Food Chain: Developing New Approaches of Investigative Audits (Prof. Dr. Achim Spiller).
Today, certification schemes are the main instrument of quality control in the global agribusiness. Independent third party audits are necessary to supervise credence attributes of food, which cannot be observed by the customer (e.g., food safety, environmental quality, animal welfare). However, important schemes like GlobalGap, Organic, Fairtrade or QS are often contested due to their focus on bureaucratic procedures instead of trying to detect the main types of opportunistic behavior and fraud. Against this background, the dissertation should develop new theories and methods of certification procedures, concentrating on massive fraud in food chains. The impact of criminal behavior is especially huge in international trade with high volumes of bulk products. In this direction, investigative auditing will ground on risk oriented approaches as well as concepts of unannounced audits, combined with ideas from investigative journalism and financial reporting.

2. The role of bounded rationality and heuristic decision making for the understanding of the weak development of weather-index insurance market in agriculture (Prof. Dr. Oliver Mußhoff)
Weather-index insurances are innovative risk management instruments that – compared to conventional insurances – cause low administration and regulation costs and are not accompanied by moral hazard or adverse selection problems. Despite these advantages, farmers make little use of weather-index insurances as yet. With this in mind, the present research project focuses on the question if bounded rationality provides an eventual explanation for the missing willingness to adopt this type of insurance. For lack of a natural experiment, an “extra-laboratory experiment” is carried out in the form of a multi-period, single-person business management game with farmers in Chile and Germany. Two major questions are to be answered: first, does the demand for weather-index insurances change if the participants are not only informed about the total insurance premium but also about the loading? Second, does demand change in a framing where participants are told that the (unchanged loading) is the result of a subsidized insurance offer?

3. Multinational Companies from Emerging Economies in Global Food Chains: Strategies, Performance and Effects on Domestic Markets (Prof. Dr. Ludwig Theuvsen).

For decades, developing and emerging countries have served international markets by exporting agricultural and food products. Often these exports were organized by local subsidiaries of multinational companies from developed countries. But in recent years, more and more multinational companies from emerging countries have entered the scene and have started to influence the structure and rules of the game of international food supply chains. These companies have established themselves as leading exporters of agricultural and food products from emerging economies but have also started to acquire former competitors from developed economies through mergers and acquisitions. Some of the leading US meat companies, for instance, are nowadays owned by Brazilian and Chinese competitors. This shows that international food supply chains have entered a new development stage. In this Ph.D. project, we look at the changes that have been going on in recent years and empirically analyze the corporate and business strategies and performance of these newly emerging competitors on international markets. Furthermore, we analyze the effects this development has on farmers and processors in the home countries of the new multinational food companies from emerging countries.

Please always refer in your application and your research proposal to one of the outlined topics!
We will not consider applications, which are not linked to one of the topics. The academic requirements of the Joint Ph.D.-Program in Agricultural Economics can be found at http://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/214095.html. Knowledge of Spanish and/or German is an asset, as is a proven record of interest in research on the development of agricultural in Latin America and pertinent interactions with Germany / the European Union.

Application documents:

• Curriculum Vitae.
• Certificates of high-school and University (Diploma and Transcripts)
• A letter of motivation (max. 2 pages)
• A Research-proposal(max. 10 pages)
• Recommendation letters from two professors using the following DAAD-form: http://www.daad.de/imperia/md/content/de/foerderung/recommendation.pdf
• A proof of English-proficiency with a TOEFL-test (or certified equivalent) better than 79 pts.

Hard copies must be sent in original plus two copies to the University of Gottingen. Moreover, the applicants must submit the same documents by email in pdf-file to jppaegwdg.de. We will only take into account complete applications.

Deadline for applications is July 06, 2014

Applications will be evaluated by the academic committee of the Ph.D. program and will be evaluated according to their academic performance, publications, quality of the research proposal, motivation and letters of recommendation.

The Universities of Göttingen and Talca aims to increase its proportion of female Ph.D.-students and specifically encourages qualified women to apply. The University is an equal-opportunity employer and strives for staff diversity. The Universities of Göttingen and Talca also aim to integrate handicapped people.

For additional information, do not hesitate to contact:
Dr. Sebastian Lakner in Göttingen: jppae@gwdg.de
Prof. Dr. Alejandra Engler in Talca: mengler@utalca.cl or jppae@utalca.cl

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