Analyzing Global Development with the Geocoded Official Development Assistance Dataset (GODAD)

Due to limited data availability, existing geospatial research on official development assistance and other forms of international development finance has largely focused on China and the World Bank. Based on the OECD’s Creditor Reporting System (CRS), the GODAD provides geo-localized information on aid projects from 18 European donors and the United States for the 1973-2020 period (see https://godad.me/). The GODAD geo-locates CRS data via a natural language processing approach and provides auxiliary information about projects along several dimensions, including donor and recipient countries, donor agencies, flow type, sectors and sub-sectors of aid, and commitment and disbursement amounts. It also includes data on aid projects from China, India, and the World Bank.

Proposals may either answer novel questions in economics, political science, and other social sciences, or propose methodological advances related to the challenge of analyzing geocoded aid data. Proposals are expected to engage with the GODAD. Authors of accepted proposals will get pre-publication access to the GODAD so that they can present a draft paper at the workshop. Early access to GODAD will be granted under the condition that the dataset and resulting working papers will not be shared outside the group of workshop participants prior to the official release of the GODAD at the data workshop. 

The workshop will take place in the picturesque university town of Göttingen. Göttingen has a vibrant academic atmosphere and is located centrally in Germany, between Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Berlin (1.5-2 hours by high-speed train), making it easily accessible. We will convene at the Göttingen Observatory, which served as the place of residence and work of famous scholar Carl Friedrich Gauss and is a building of unique importance for the history of science. 

The workshop is funded by the VolkswagenStiftung through the funding scheme Momentum as part of the research project “Tapping innovative data sources to analyze the impact of authoritarian states on global development.” There is no conference fee but participants are required to pay their own travel and accommodation.

The deadline for the submission of a one-page proposal is September 30, 2024. The proposal should briefly describe the research question, planned methods, and the dataset(s) required to answer the research question. Please submit your proposal at https://app.oxfordabstracts.com/stages/76562/submitter. Decisions will be sent out by mid-October and, if the paper has been accepted, access to the required datasets will then be given.

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