Sebastian Bredl

Empirical Research Methods Applied to the Case of Developing Countries

Abstract: The title of my dissertation “Empirical research methods applied to the case of developing countries” is quite comprehensive, due to the fact that it covers three different subjects, which are not very closely related. The central part of this dissertation is made up of the first two papers. These papers use household surveys from two Latin American countries – Bolivia and Haiti – to empirically investigate the determinants of educational achievements. The second subject is linked to survey data quality, namely falsification and data fabrication by interviewers and is covered in the third and fourth paper. In order to test a new method for identifying falsifiers, a small dataset from an Eastern European transition country is used. The fifth and sixth paper investigate recruitment strategies of African enterprises based on a survey carried out in the Tanzanian town of Mwanza.