Anna Hehenberger Defends Dissertation on Green Growth and Decarbonization

At the beginning of October 2025, Anna Hehenberger successfully defended her dissertation, “Green Vanguards and Dependent Followers: Green Growth and Decarbonisation in Export-Led Economies” at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Using Denmark and Austria as case studies, she explores in her research why export-led economies decarbonize at different rates and to different extents. Her analysis shows that the crucial factor is not a country’s growth model, but the strategic orientation of its export sector. Denmark’s early role at the vanguard is closely associated with its heavily export-led wind power industry, which benefits from global decarbonization efforts and drives green innovation. Austria, meanwhile, took longer to commit to decarbonization, which can be explained by an export structure that is oriented toward intermediate goods, where firms respond only to growing pressure from global demand. Hehenberger’s study shows how structural dependencies and global power relations shape the green transition – a perspective that goes beyond the usual decarbonization debates. Her dissertation was supervised by Lucio Baccaro. Anna Hehenberger joined the International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy (IMPRS-SPCE) as a doctoral researcher in 2021 and will be staying at the MPIfG until the end of November of this year. In December she will take up a postdoc position split between Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and Johannes Kepler University Linz.