Add-on Fellowships for Interdisciplinary Economics

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.