Prof Dieter von Fintel is the Vice Dean for Research, Internationalisation and Postgraduate Affairs in the Faculty of Economic and Management Sciences at Stellenbosch University. He is a development economist and economic historian who has worked in the Research on Socioeconomic Policy (ReSEP) and Laboratory for the Economics of Africa’s Past (LEAP) since both research groups’ inception. He completed his PhD in Labour Economics in 2014 at Stellenbosch, having spent 2012 as a visiting Commonwealth PhD scholar at Oxford University. His research focuses on uncovering the impacts of historical and contemporary policies and events on agricultural, labour, food security and health outcomes of households and firms in various parts of sub-Saharan Africa. An expert in applied micro-econometrics, Dieter analyses differences in economic and human development using a combination of survey, administrative and satellite data, with a particular focus on inequalities between people and places.

His award-winning work on South Africa’s long-run economic divergence (with co-author Johan Fourie) received the 2020 Montias prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Comparative Economics and was featured by The Economist in its 2020 Christmas issue. He was also awarded the 2020 best paper prize by the Economic History of Developing Regions for his work on spatial inequalities in agriculture. The Agricultural Economics Association of South Africa awarded him the prize for best journal article in 2024. Multiple graduate students have been awarded prizes for the best Economics PhD and Masters research in South Africa conducted under his supervision.

He is a research affiliate of the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA); a research fellow of the Global Labor Organisation (GLO), is affiliated with the Pan-African Scientific Research Council (PASRC) and sits on the Academy of Science of South Africa’s Standing Committee on Science for Reduction of Poverty and Inequality. He has consulted on development economic and statistical issues to the World Food Programme, the United Nations Children Fund, the Bureau for Food and Agricultural Policy, the World Bank, the South African Reserve Bank, and various national statistics offices. He previously sat on the National Research Foundation's Specialist Ratings Committee for Economics.