Nils Handler

Nils Handler entered the PhD in economics as part of the first cohort of the Berlin School of Economics in 2019. He has a keen interest in investigating policies aimed at decarbonizing the economy and achieving the energy transition at least cost. More broadly he seeks to understand how our social contract needs to be recalibrated in the light of the emerging green growth paradigm.

Nils has worked on diversifying ressource-rich economies for the past six years at the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) and more recently at the German Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources. He has presented evidence-based policy advice to high-level policy makers in South Africa, Botswana, the DRC, Zambia, as well as at the OECD, and has actively participated in policy conferences in London and Mexico City. He joined the IADB as Carlo-Schmid Fellow in the Italian Executive Director’s office and is an alumnus of the German Academic Merit Foundation of Protestant Churches.

Nils is a development economist by training holding MSc degrees in Development Economics from the London School of Economics (distinction) and the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, as well as a BSc degree in International Economics with focus on Latin America from the University of Tuebingen. During an exchange year at the University of Sao Paulo he learned Portuguese and also speaks fluent English, German, Spanish, and basic French.