Add-on Fellowships for Interdisciplinary Economics

Felix Chopra

University of Bonn

In my research I use observational and experimental data to study questions in behavioral economics, media economics and household finance. In particular, my research focuses on how the media and modern communication technologies shape people’s beliefs, preferences and behavior. I am also interested in people’s motivation to read news and the implications of these motives for the democratic process.

Christian Fischer

University of Bayreuth

Research interests: International Trade, Industrial Organization, Relational Contracts

My research studies the organization of global value chains, the interrelation of globalization and trade policy, as well as topics in national and cross-border competition policy. In a new research project, I study the interdependencies of the offshoring decisions of firms with voters’ preferences over trade policy and the corresponding political outcomes. Thereby, voters’ preferences do not only incorporate their material interests but also psychosocial considerations. The aim of this project is to understand the quality of social re-orientation in the presence of task offshoring and, moreover, to investigate the repercussions of changes in social identity on voter attitudes towards trade policy.

Ilka Gerhardts

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Research Interests: Health Economics, Economics of Education

My  main research project studies the impact of labor induction on maternal and neonatal health. Birth intervention effects are highly relevant, especially in countries like Germany with interventions rates above OECD level and birth rates below replacement. The fellowship allows me to analyze newly released perinatal records of all hospital births in Germany and to discuss my findings with international experts in the field. My other projects deal with educational reforms, e.g., the effects of multigrade teaching on students’ success.

© Seminar für Bevölkerungsökonomie, LMU

Günther Glenk

Mannheim Institute for
Sustainable Energy Studies

Interests: Sustainable Business Economics

There is broad consensus that the world economies urgently need to transition towards decarbonized energy systems. It remains an open question, though, whether this transition can be achieved within the time left to avert harmful consequences of global warming due to increased carbon dioxide concentrations. Neither is it clear how different pathways to decarbonization compare in terms of economic costs. My research at the Mannheim Institute for Sustainable Energy Studies (MISES) will examine a range of initiatives that would accelerate the transition to a decarbonized energy future.

Simon Heß

Goethe-Universität Frankfurt

Research Interests: Networks, Causal Inference, Field Experiments

I study questions in applied microeconomics in the context of low-income countries, using data on social and economic networks and remote sensing data. My research focuses on adapting and applying experimental methods to assess the impact of anti-poverty interventions on social structures and the environment. I am especially interested in how these interventions affect inter-household networks, and how such networks mediate the effects of interventions on economic outcomes. Findings from my research contribute to the understanding of economic interactions in networks, thereby helping to design effective policies.

Ekaterina Jussupow

University of Mannheim

Research interests: Future of Work, Artificial Intelligence, Healthcare, Information Systems

My research deals with the question how systems based on artificial intelligence (AI) change the work of human experts. In my dissertation, I look at the example of physicians who are increasingly confronted with AI systems that seem to be able to diagnose patients more accurately and faster than themselves. In experiments and interviews I investigate how the dynamics between replacing tasks and improving human abilities (augmentation) affects the work of physicians. I consider following questions: How are decisions made together with an AI? What influences the acceptance of an AI? As patients, how would we decide between an AI and a doctor?  

Anna Kerkhof

University of Cologne

My research focuses on media economics and the economics of digitization; it combines questions and methods from applied microeconomics, political science, information systems (IS), and management. I pursue two goals. First, I strive for a better understanding of media biases, which includes developing methods to detect them, measuring their effect on economic and social outcomes, and figuring out how to mitigate them. Second, I want to comprehend how digital markets and digital platforms function such that I can find ways for the society to benefit from the technological progress.

Felix Kersting

Humboldt-Universität Berlin

Research Interests: Economic history, political economy

In my research I deal with the formation and change of social identities in the 19th century in Germany. For this purpose, I analyze (1) the effect of Bismarck's carrot and stick policies on the approval of the social democratic party, (2) the consequences of trade shocks during the first globalization on the spread of nationalist and socialist parties and associations, and (3) the effects of nation building policies on national identity.

Jonas Löbbing

Universität zu Köln

Research Interests: Economic Growth and Inequality, Economic Policy

In my research I analyze the effects of digital technologies on the distribution of income and the implications of digitization for the design of redistributive policies. In particular, I develop economic theories of the income distribution, in which technology directly replaces certain types of human labor (“automation”). I use these theories, for example, to simulate the effects of redistributive income tax systems or taxes on robots. My work integrates knowledge of recent developments in computer science and engineering, which are indicative of the type of tasks that are likely to be automated in the near future, into economic analysis.

Lukas Mergele

ifo Institut München

I am an applied economist with research interests in the economics of the public sector. My research aims at understanding causal relationships with microeconometric methods. I often focus on historical contexts that are of relevance to the present. An important topic of my work is the economic and social consequences of German reunification. In particular, I would like to contribute to a better understanding of the privatization of companies by the Treuhandanstalt. This work is thus closely linked to current research in contemporary history.

Lukas Rosenberger

Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München

Research Interests: Economic growth, Economic History

My research addresses the historical origins of Europe’s riches, in particular the generation and accumulation of capital and knowledge before 1900. In my dissertation, I study how school education influenced the spread of Enlightenment, the onset of the demographic transition, and scientific–technological progress during the Industrial Revolution in France. In the project supported by the Herz foundation, I collect novel archival data from 15th century Southern Germany to study the emergence and dynamics of early capitalism.

Magnus Schückes

University of Mannheim

Research interests: Nonmarket strategies, corporate political activity, corporate socio-political activism

My research concerns the nonmarket strategies of corporates and new ventures. While the management literature often focuses purely on market strategies, in practice, the political and socio-cultural influence of companies plays an increasingly important role. Corporations and their representatives not only lobby for their interests behind closed doors, but increasingly position themselves in the public discourse. The same applies to new ventures and start-ups, whose disruptive products often have regulatory and normative hurdles to overcome, making them increasingly dependent on their own political capabilities. The outcomes of respective corporate nonmarket strategies are at the heart of my research.

The Joachim Herz Foundation annually awards ten “Add-on Fellowships for Interdisciplinary Economics”. The fellowships aim to support PhD-students and postdocs who work on interdisciplinary economic questions.

The fellowship program addresses researchers who intend to deepen their skills in fields related to economics and whose research could benefit from such skills. Researchers from fields other than economics can also be supported if they work on issues with economic relevance. In any case, an affiliation with a public German research institution is required as the fellowships do not provide basic funding.

Fellows are supported with an amount of up to € 12.500 over the course of two years. The funds can be spent flexibly, e.g. attending interdisciplinary training sessions or workshops, attending conferences or financing research visits. Equipment, e.g. PCs, software or data, can also be purchased. The program will run until 2022.

Jury 2019:

Prof. Dr. Dominik van Aaken (Universität Salzburg)
Prof. Dr. Christine Binzel (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg)
Prof. Dr. Urs Fischbacher (Universität Konstanz)
Prof. Dr. Hermann Held (Universität Hamburg)
Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jan Marcus (Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung)
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Heiner Schumacher (Katholieke Universiteit Leuve

Viola Ackfeld

University of Cologne

In my research I focus on coercion and repugnance in human decision-making, incorporating insights from ethics literature into economic analysis. Ignoring these potential negative side-effects may lead to adverse or welfare-reducing outcomes. Examples include payments for organ, blood or egg-cell donations as well as CO2- emissions, opaque trade of personal information, or paying for line skipping, which show a strong relation to research in ethics, medicine, or information systems.

Dr. Peter Eppinger

University of Tübingen

In my research I have analyzed trade finance, the labor market impact of offshoring, and the organization of multinational firms. My current research combines insights from Economics and Geosciences to investigate the global transmission of regional shocks through multinational firm networks. In this research project, I use tools from Geoinformatics to map geo-gridded data on natural disasters to rich information on firms’ performance and ownership links. Using this unique dataset, I analyze how disruptions of production processes propagate through the networks and which types of networks are more resilient to shocks.

Magdalena Krieger

German Institute for Economic Research

Marriage and family are generally given a high priority in societies. Yet, the migration of families has been subject to fierce public and political debate for decades. My dissertation project aims at shedding light on the complex process of family migration by combining economic with sociological research. In particular, I analyze how couples take migration decisions, how family migrants fare on the German labor market and, how reunification with their families impacts migrants' willingness to invest.

Dr. Markus Nagler

Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich

In my research, I am interested in two broad topics. First, I aim at understanding the foundations of new ideas and innovation. In this part of my research I investigate determinants of knowledge diffusion and the importance of access to existing knowledge for new inventions. Second, I am interested in questions related to labor markets, such as education and migration. With the fellowship, I want to investigate how the arrival of refugees impacts the integration of previous immigrants.

Dr. Jan S. Nimczik

Humboldt University Berlin

In my research agenda, I analyze the determinants and consequences of worker and job mobility. In my current projects I aim to study two particular historic events that resulted in impediments to worker mobility - the situation in south-west Germany after World War II and the German reunification. For both events I identify the consequences for economic growth, labor market integration, and various socio-economic indicators.

Elnaz Roshan

University of Hamburg

Mimicking volcanic eruptions, sulfur aerosol injection (SAI) into the stratosphere has been proposed as a means to deliberately interfere with the climate system to offset some of anthropogenic climate change impacts. In my research, I apply a welfare-based approach to evaluate an integrated cost-risk trade-off of SAI and traditional greenhouse gas emissions mitigation policies when regional climate disparities and probabilistic information on climate sensitivity are taken into account. Cost-risk analysis is a hybrid decision framework of cost-benefit and cost-effectiveness analyses and trades off costs of climate policies against climate risks from overshooting an environmental target. I am interested in decision making under uncertainty and studying the most prominent pros and cons of SAI in the concept of cost and risk.

Dr. Janina Steinert

University of Göttingen

Recent empirical research suggests that poverty has a direct causal impact on psychological and cognitive factors. Hence, living in scarcity can increase a person's risk aversion, hopelessness, procrastination, and present bias, and diminish his or her concentration and self control. My research examines how such impaired psychological wellbeing relates to financial behaviour, including saving, borrowing, and investment decisions. Findings from my research could help inform the design of future poverty reduction programmes and will critically test the viability of psychological interventions for improving financial behaviour.

Dr. Ann Tank

University of Stuttgart

In my research I am looking at the visualisation of key data e.g. management dashboards, to support decision makers. I am especially interested in preventing cognitive overload or little stimulus. With neuroscientific methods, e.g. the functional magnetic resonance tomography and electroencephalography, I analyze how the amount and the structure of key data diagrams as well as differences on the quality of decisions leading back on this, react on the neuronal activation of certain brain areas.

Johannes Wohlfahrt

Goethe University Frankfurt

In my research I use observational and experimental data to study questions in household finance, behavioral economics and macroeconomics. In particular, my research focuses on expectation formation and the role of expectations in shaping people’s consumption and financial behavior. I am also interested in the determinants of individuals’ fairness views and their demand for public policies.