Michael Danquah is a Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER.
He is a development economist. He currently co-leads the projects Transforming informal work and livelihoods, Sub-national institutional performance across Ghana’s districts and regions – variation and causes, and Structural Transformation in African cities.
Michael is a co-chair of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) Scientific Panel on Population, Inequality and Climate Change and a visiting Research Fellow at the Transfer Project. Previously, he worked at the Department of Economics, University of Ghana, Legon. His research interest is in economic development in sub-Saharan Africa, primarily focussing on issues such as informality, inclusive growth, climate change, and productivity growth among others. He is also interested in applying probabilistic machine learning to study development economic issues.
His research has been published in journals such as Journal of Development Studies, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Small Business Economics, Journal of African Economies, and Energy Economics among others. He is a co-editor of a special issue in the Journal of Development Studies, and a book volume with Fields et al. titled The Job Ladder: Transforming Informal Work and Livelihoods in Developing Countries, published by Oxford University Press, UK.
He has been awarded the Most Promising Young Scholar and Best Researcher in the School of Social Sciences, University of Ghana, Legon.
Michael has also been interviewed by the BBC World Service on issues related to poverty reduction as well as the pandemic effects of COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa.
