Professor Simon Jäger, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Economics and Public Affairs
Princeton University, Department of Economics and School of Public and International Affairs
Photo: David Degner
Professional career and research topics
Simon Jäger’s academic background includes a Bachelor of Arts and a Master of Science in Economics from Bonn University, followed by advanced studies at Harvard University in Cambridge (USA) where he also obtained his Ph.D. in 2016. His doctoral thesis was awarded the first prize of the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research and the David A. Wells Prize of Harvard University for the most outstanding dissertation in economics.
He subsequently worked as an assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge (USA), prior to assuming the role of Director of the IZA Institute of Labour Economics in Berlin and Bonn in 2022. Simon Jäger had also been employed as an Associate Professor of Economics at MIT since 2022. Since 2025, he has been employed as an Associate Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University (USA). He is a member of Princeton’s Industrial Relations Section and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
In 2025, Simon Jäger was appointed an IAB Research Fellow.
His research focuses on labour markets and explores the origins and consequences of inequality.
His work has been published in leading journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of the American Statistical Association as well as the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.