Hi, my name is Dieter and welcome to my personal website! I'm an economist by training and am working at the World Bank to find policy-relevant insights into sustainable finance, sovereign ESG, natural capital and government bonds. I explore these topics by applying econometrics and machine learning to various datasets, ranging from financial Bloomberg data to geospatial satellite data. I'm passionate about getting the key insights across with visualizations that tell a story. During my time, I've collaborated with central banks, tech companies, reinsurances, investment banks and even a space agency. I held visiting positions at Columbia Business School and the Dutch Central Bank.

I first joined the Bank in 2018 during my doctoral studies and am now part of the Long-Term Finance team, under the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice. You can read up on my latest work on World Bank blogs.

"Issuances of green bonds, social bonds and other use of proceeds bonds continue to break new records and are projected to make up more than 40% of new issuances in Europe. Voices criticizing greenwashing, reporting standards and questioning whether green financing instruments are really adding to sustainable finance have become louder as well." (from Part 1) Sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs) are promising alternatives. "At the end of the day, issuers want to be sure that their efforts are adequately rewarded, and investors want to know that they are having a real impact. Otherwise, SLBs will face the same questions about greenwashing and additionality. A KPI based on a transparent, scientific model addresses these concerns by construction." (from Part 2)

Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investing has finally struck a chord with mainstream finance. With billions of dollars under sustainable management, ESG is no longer a niche topic but is becoming ordre du jour in the investment world. The scores, however, are not a one-fit-all solution for sustainability, especially on the country level. As part of the long-term finance team, I look at the ESG scores and use statistical methods to examine how they relate to national income, natural wealth or credit ratings.

As a modeling consultant for the Fragility, Conflict and Violence unit, I collaborated with leading insurance companies and global tech companies on the Famine Action Mechanism. In this project, I developed a stochastic model to understand and predict the population dynamics in food insecurity. See here (World Bank) and here (Washington Post) for press coverage of our project.