Profile
Maximiliane Sievert is the co-head of the research department “Climate and Development Policy” at RWI. Her research lies at the intersection of environmental and development economics, with a focus on how households and communities adjust their livelihood strategies in response to environmental and economic pressures. Her work also examines how climate and development policies shape welfare, economic opportunities, and long-term development outcomes.
Methodologically, her research is grounded in applied econometrics and rigorous impact evaluation. She has extensive experience designing and implementing large-scale household and enterprise surveys and evaluating development and climate-related interventions across Africa, Asia, and Latin America. She combines experimental and quasi-experimental approaches with tailored data collection. For example, she integrates household surveys, expert elicitation, and satellite-based information. Beyond her substantive research agenda, Maximiliane also contributes to the growing field of meta-science, studying how research practices affect credibility, transparency, and policy relevance of scientific evidence in economics.
Maximiliane has advised international organizations and development agencies, including World Bank, GIZ, KfW, FMO and the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO), and has worked on projects in Burkina Faso, Colombia, Ghana, Indonesia, Peru, Rwanda, Senegal, Tanzania, and Uganda. Her research has been published in leading peer-reviewed journals, including Nature Communications, Nature Climate Change, the Journal of the Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, the World Bank Economic Review, and World Development.