Adam Eddy Szirmai is Professorial Fellow at the UNU Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (UNU-MERIT) and Professor of Development Economics at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance of Maastricht University.
His research focuses on international comparisons of growth and productivity in manufacturing in developing countries. He has been involved in research projects in manufacturing in Indonesia, China, South Korea, Tanzania, Zambia, South Africa and Japan. A second focus of his research concerns the relationships between innovation, technological change and economic performance at sectoral level. His research has a strong emphasis on empirical measurement of levels and trends in economic performance. A third area of research interest is that of the determinants of long-run growth and stagnation in developing countries.
In 2001, Palgrave Press published his volume on Tanzanian Industrialisation, co-edited with Paul Lapperre entitled The Industrial Experience of Tanzania. His textbook on development studies The Dynamics of Socio-economic Development was published by Cambridge University Press in 2005. Accompanying this textbook, a website has been developed with time series of economic and social indicators for developing countries. An second edition of this book is in preparation. In 2011, Oxford University Press will publish a volume on Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Development, coedited with Wim Naudé and Micheline Goedhuys.
Eddy Szirmai is engaged in ongoing research on changes in the global structure of manufacturing. This research focuses on long-run changes in the structure and location of manufacturing activities and the emergence of manufacturing in developing countries in the period 1950-2005.