Team
Joachim Ahrens studied economics and political science. He earned a doctoral degree and the Habilitation degree at the Department of Economics at the University of Goettingen. Following research affiliations at HarvardUniversity, the Hoover Institution/Stanford University, and the University of California/Berkeley, he worked as an economist at the Asian Development Bank in Manila. In 2003, he accepted a position as Professor of International Political Economy at the European Business School International University, Oestrich-Winkel, Germany. In March 2006, he became Professor of International Economics at the PFH Goettingen.
Joachim Ahrens has substantial experiences in teaching at the undergraduate and graduate level as well as in the area of executive education. He has taught at various universities in Germany and abroad.
His research interests center around systemic transformation in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, European integration, economic development and integration processes in East Asia as well as the interplay of institutions, governance, and economic development.
Project Output
Transitional Institutions, Institutional Complementarities and Economic Performance in China
Transition towards a Social Market Economy? Limits and Opportunities
The politico-institutional foundation of economic transition in Central Asia: Lessons from China
Adaptive efficiency and pragmatic flexibility: characteristics of institutional change in capitalism
Farrukh Irnazarov is a Researcher at the University of Applied Sciences, Göttingen. He holds two MSc degrees – one in International and European Relations from Linköping University, Sweden and another one in Business Administration and Economics from Stockholm University, Sweden, and a BA in International Economic Relations from the National University of Uzbekistan, Uzbekistan. His current research project addresses the role of institutional complementarities in emerging market economies of Post-Soviet Central Asia. He worked as a Postgraduate Researcher/Associate Faculty Lecturer in Strategic Management and International Trade at the National College of Ireland, Ireland and was a Guest Researcher at the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies, Denmark. Besides, he was also involved in various research projects and studied in the USA, Netherlands, Germany, France, Russia and India.
Project Output
Transition Strategies in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan since Independence: Paradoxes and Prospects
Roman Vakulchuk holds two Master of Arts degrees. His first MA he obtained in International Relations at the joint program of Jacobs University Bremen and University Bremen and second MA in Peace and Security Studies from the Hamburg University. In 2006 he got a BA at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University in Kyrgyzstan with major in International Relations.
Since September 2009 he is pursuing a PhD degree in Economics at the Jacobs University Bremen. His dissertation is devoted to the study of market economies in Central Asia, with a focus on development of institutions in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. He worked as analyst on climate change policy at the European Retail Systems Technology, Hamburg and did an internship at Shell Deutschland Oil, Hamburg, in the Department of External Communications and Economic Policy.
His interests are institutional economics, international political economy, environmental economics, climate change policy of the oil and gas business, and energy consulting. As expert on climate change he participated in the UN Climate Change conference in Copenhagen in 2009.
Project Output
Manuel Stark is a doctoral student at the Department of Economics, European Business School (EBS) Oestrich-Winkel. He focuses his research on institutional reform and drivers for economic success in emerging economies. In addition to his work for the Project “Emerging Market Economies in Central Asia, Manuel Stark is a Research Fellow in the “Kompetenznetzwerk PostSozialismus” and a lecturer in Economics in the long-distance program of the PFH Göttingen.
Manuel Stark graduated in 2006 as Diplom-Kaufmann from the European Business School. As a part of his studies at the EBS, he spent semesters abroad in South Korea and Mexico. These countries can both be considered emerging economies, but show remarkable differences in their political and administrative system, their culture and their recent economic development. The experiences he made during his stay abroad are a major source of motivation for Manuel Stark to analyze the challenges for the emerging economies in Central Asia. After writing his diploma thesis on the influence of special-interest groups as a driver for economic success, Manuel Stark decided to pursue a doctoral degree under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Joachim Ahrens.
Project Output
The developmental state as a reference model for transition economies in Central Asia
Alexander Libman is Junior Professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, Head of Research Group "New Political Economy" at the Institute of Economics of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Research Fellow at the East China Normal University. He holds PhD degrees in economics from the Russian Academy of Sciences (2005: candidate of science) and University of Mannheim (2009: Dr. rer. pol.) and has been visiting researcher and PhD student at the University of Marburg and Stockholm School of Economics. His main research interests include empirical public economics and political economics. Main publications include contributions to Europe-Asia Studies, European Journal of Comparative Economics, Social Sciences, Studies on Russian Economic Development and several papers in Russian and Chinese academic journals.
Project Output
Zum Spannungsfeld zwischen staatlicher und privater Wirtschaft in den postsowjetischen Staaten
The Economic Role of Public Administration in Central Asia
Regional Integration in Central Asia
Post-Soviet countries in global and regional institutional competition: The case of Kazakhstan
Institutional Competition in the Post-Soviet Space
Government-Business Relations in Post-Soviet Space: The Case of Central Asia
Government-Business Relations in Central Asia: Approaches to Comparative Analysis
Ex Ante and Ex Post Institutional Convergence: Case of the Post-Soviet Space
Being a graduate in economics from the University of Kassel, Gerhard Toews has completed his Master studies at the University of Edinburgh. Since September 2009 he is a DPhil student at the University of Oxford. His areas of interest include transition economics, foreign direct investments, and institutional economics. In his academic studies, he will particularly focus on existing and developing institutions in Central Asia, most notably in Kazakhstan.
Martin Mendelski is research fellow at the Private University of Applied Sciences in Göttingen and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Luxembourg. His current research addresses rule of law reform in Central and Eastern Europe.
Project Output
Institutional complementarities and law enforcement during post-communist transition
Zafar Salmanov is a graduate student from Umea School of Business and Economics at University of Umea, Sweden. He is majoring in Marketing Research and Analysis Management. His graduate topic addresses the concept of market orientation of small and medium sized enterprises in Uzbekistan. He worked as a business analyst for adidas AG and Schwarzkopf & Henkel AG in Germany. During his studies he completed internship with the UN headquarters in New York.
Zafar also holds a Master’s Degree in Business Administration and Economics from StockholmUniversity.
Erica Ross has recently finished her Master degree in International Economics and Business, as well as a Master degree in International Organisations and International Relations. For the latter she wrote a thesis on the management of oil revenues in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, which is published below.
Project Output
Piotr Fudala graduated from JagiellonianUniversity in Krakow, Poland with an International Relations MA and also with an MA in Middle East and Far East Studies. He is PhD student writing thesis about the international security issues in Central Asia. His professional experience in consultancy includes many kinds of market research projects in Eastern Europe and CIS countries.
Christoph Schinner graduated at the Private University of Applied Sciences in Göttingen in 2009. He studied business administration and ended his studies with the degree Diplom-Kaufmann. His majors within the studies were sales management and e-business. Afterwards he directly started working as an inhouse consultant.
At present he is also a research assistant to the research project about the emerging market economies in Central Asia.
Nikolas Weise is student of the Bachelor Program General Management at the Private University Göttingen. Next to two obligatory languages (English, French), he takes part at the Spanish courses so as to complete his study program with. Having spent several stays in different countries, he experienced, inter alia, different economical situations and regulations.
In addition to his studies, Nikolas Weise is research assistant and part of the team researching on the emerging market economies of Central Asia.
Joachim Algermissen studies General Management at the Private University of Applied Sciences in his last year. He will finish the Bachelor in 2011and aims for a master degree thereafter. Joachim has several experiences in the financial sector. He worked three years in a bank and made three internships in different financial companies.
Stefan Brinkhoff is student of the Bachelor Program General Management at the Private University Göttingen. Next to two obligatory languages (English, Spanish), he has gained experiences on the information technology market; having founded a company, Stefan dealt mainly with mid-size companys, creating corporate identitys and providing primarily individual IT solutions for the Word Wide Web. Furthermore, he gained international experience due to several stays in different countries.
In addition to his studies, Stefan Brinkhoff is research assistant and part of the team researching on the emerging market economies of Central Asia.
