Thushyanthan Baskaran

Prof. Thushyanthan Baskaran is a Professor at the Department of Public and Regional Economics at Ruhr-University Bochum, holding the Chair in Public and Regional Economics. Previously, he served at the University of Siegen since 2015. He holds a diploma in economics from Freie Universität Berlin and a PhD from Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. His research focuses on political economy, regional development, tax policy, and gender dynamics in governance. His work examines topics like fiscal federalism, political institutions, and the impact of gender representation on public policy. He has published extensively in top journals such as the Journal of Public Economics and the Review of Economics and Statistics. His studies often employ quasi-experimental methods to analyze policy impacts, with a particular emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa and European contexts. Notable contributions include analyzing tax competition, political business cycles, and the long-term effects of resource wealth on education. He has collaborated on projects exploring regional favoritism, the economic implications of female leadership, and the consequences of electoral thresholds on political representation.

His academic trajectory includes postdoctoral work at the University of Gothenburg and a position as an assistant professor at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. He has contributed to debates on fiscal decentralization, soft budget constraints in the Eurozone, and the interplay between globalization and collective bargaining. His recent work emphasizes gender disparities in political recontest rates and the macroeconomic effects of mineral resource exploitation in Africa. Prof. Baskaran’s research bridges theoretical frameworks with empirical analysis, offering insights into governance structures and their socio-economic outcomes.