Chair of International Economic Policy

Tobias Hellmundt

Tobias Hellmundt is a PhD candidate at the Chair of International Economic Policy, supervised by Prof. Dr. Kis-Katos. His research focuses on understanding the drivers and consequences of land use changes, leveraging quasi-experimental methods, spatial data, remote sensing, and machine learning.

Tobias is part of the BMZ-DEval funded Rigorous Impact Evaluation "Ecological and socio-economic effects of the forest restoration program PLAE in Madagascar".
Previously, he was a doctoral researcher at the Collaborative Research Center 990, where he contributed to the project "Localized environmental and land use policies, palm oil conversion and deforestation" (C10).

Education


  • B.Sc. in Economics, Heidelberg University, Germany
  • M.Sc. in Economics, Heidelberg University, Germany


Research Interests


  • Environmental Economics
  • Development Economics
  • Remote Sensing & Machine Learning
  • Land Use & Global Change


Work in Progress


  • Mobility Responses to Wildfire Pollution and Unequal Adaptation in Indonesia (with Madhavi Pundit)
  • Measuring Reforestation Success with Very-High-Resolution Satellite Imagery (with Fabian Wölk)
  • Land-use transformation and conflict: Evidence from Indonesia's oil palm boom (with Elías Cisneros and Krisztina Kis-Katos)
  • Oil palm expansion and the economics of forest fragmentation (with Elías Cisneros and Krisztina Kis-Katos)
  • Trees grow better on certified land: Quasi-experimental evidence from Madagascar (with Krisztina Kis-Katos and Zaneta Kubik)
  • Designing Effective Reforestation Projects (with Krisztina Kis-Katos, Nicolas Klas, and Zaneta Kubik)


Selected Presentations


  • Interdisciplinary PhD Workshop in Sustainable Development (IPWSD) at Columbia University (03/2026)
  • North East Universities Development Consortium (NEUDC) Conference (11/2024)
  • Sustainable Food Systems Symposium (09/2024)
  • World Bank Land Conference (05/2024)
  • International Symposium 'Transformation of Tropical Rainforest', Yogyakarta, Indonesia (10/2023)
  • Interdisciplinary PhD Workshop in Sustainable Development (IPWSD) at Columbia University (03/2023)
  • 6th International Conference on the Political Economy of Democracy and Dictatorship (PEDD) Münster (02/2023)
  • LEADS Leibniz Environment and Development Symposium Hamburg (11/2022)
  • EEA-ESEM Congress Milano (08/2022)
  • TVSEP Conference Göttingen (05/2022)
  • 2022 Meeting of the European Public Choice Society (04/2022)
  • 17th Annual Workshop of the Households in Conflict Network (10/2021)
  • Ulvön Conference on Environmental Economics (08/2021)


Teaching


  • Seminar: Global Economic Policy - Empirical Replications (Bachelors, University of Göttingen, WS 2025/26, SS 2026)
  • Macroeconomics I: Teaching assistant (Bachelors, University of Göttingen, SS 2022, WS 2025/26)
  • Macroeconomics II: Teaching assistant (Bachelors, University of Göttingen, WS 2022/23, SS 2025)