Ruth Fortmann

Ruth is a third year PhD student at Universidade Nova de Lisboa and a PODER fellow at LSE. She holds a M.Sc. degree in Economics and Finance from the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics at Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

During Ruth's PhD she gained experience as a field researcher in Mozambique. She worked in data collection and project implementation of a large scale RCT on the introduction of Mobile Banking. Her personal research focuses on the interface between Development and Behavioural Economics. She is particularly interested in exploring how social networks lend themselves to enhance local development. During her appointment at LSE she worked with Gharad Bryan on a project that aims at understanding competition and the constraints on retail development in developing countries and worked on a joint forthcoming paper: 'Idle Labor and Unproductive SMEs? Empirical evidence from Ghana' (Gharad Bryan, Ruth Fortmann and Margaret McConnell).

PODER Appointment: Sept 2015 - May 2016