Skip to content

​The workshop took place from January 18th to 20th 2023. Read the complete event report.

The IAB’s Graduate School (GradAB) invites young researchers to its 14th interdisciplinary Ph.D. workshop “Perspectives on (Un-)Employment”. The workshop provides an opportunity for graduate students to present their ongoing work in the field of theoretical and empirical labor market research and receive feedback from leading scholars in the discipline. We seek papers that cover any one of the following topics:

  • Labor supply, labor demand and unemployment
  • Evaluation of labor market institutions and policies
  • Education, qualification and job tasks
  • Inequality, poverty and discrimination
  • Gender and family
  • Migration and international labor markets
  • Health and job satisfaction
  • Technological change and digitization
  • The impact of climate change on the labor market
  • Applications of machine learning and big data in labor market research
  • Survey methodology (in labor market research)
  • Data quality (in labor market research)
  • Innovative data collection methods

Call for Papers

Submission

We invite Ph.D. students to submit an extended abstract (maximum of 500 words) or a full (preliminary) paper in pdf format to IAB.PHD-WORKSHOP@iab.de.

  • The submission should include your contact information and CV
  • Please use the format lastname_firstname_paper.pdf
  • Please name up to five keywords (or JEL classification) at the beginning of your submission to categorize your research

Deadline

The deadline for submission is 14 October 2022. We will notify you about whether your paper has been accepted by 8 November 2022.

Travel Costs

For presenters without funding, a limited number of travel grants are available. Please indicate along with your submission whether you would like to apply for a travel grant. We will provide more information about the application with the notifications of acceptance.

The 5nd Workshop on Spatial Dimensions of the Labour Market is jointly organized by the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and focuses on a broad range of topics related to regional labour markets.

This year, a special focus is on aspects revolving around the Covid19 crisis. COVID-19 is hitting local labour markets at a time when megatrends related to globalisation, digitalisation, technological change, are reshaping the way we live and work. The pandemic causes enormous economic and social disruptions which might affect regional labour markets in various ways in the short and long term.

The two organizing institutions, Institute for Employment Research (IAB), and Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), aim to bring together frontier research of labour economists, regional economists, sociologists, geographers and scholars from related fields. Theoretical, empirical and policy-oriented contributions are very welcome. The workshop provides a forum that allows scientists to network while fostering the exchange of research ideas and results. 

The workshop has a special focus on the spatial dimension of the consequences of the pandemic and changing economic activity. Apart from this interest, a non-exhaustive list of topics is:

  • COVID-19 pandemic, it’s impact on local labour markets
  • Telecommuting
  • Spatial distribution of activities, disparities and inequalities
  • Spatial mismatch, unemployment and spatial job search
  • Mobility of labour and imperfect labour markets
  • Location decisions and urban amenities
  • Neighbourhoods, proximity, and urban density
  • Regional dimensions of wage determination
  • Evaluation of regional labour market policy and urban or regional policy
  • Effects of globalization and technological change
  • Methodological and data-driven innovations (e.g. use of geo-coded data)

The conference is open to all areas of microsimulation, including static and dynamic microsimulation, agent-based models, behavioural models, and all applied and methodological contributions related to microsimulation. Moreover, there will also be thematic streams during the conference (organised together with partners in brackets):

  • Labour markets and welfare policies (Dr. Kerstin Bruckmeier, Institute for Employment Research IAB)
  • Comparative analysis on taxes and benefits (Salvador Barrios, PhD, Joint Research Centre, European Commission)
  • Dynamic microsimulation (Prof. Ralf Münnich, MikroSim FOR2559)
  • Health (Ieva Skarda, PhD, Centre for Health Economics at the University of York)
  • Agriculture and environment (Prof. Cathal O’Donoghue, National University of Ireland, Galway; University of Maastricht) 

Digital technologies can be both labour-saving and labour-augmenting, thereby changing the division of labour between humans and machines. While an increasing range of tasks can be automated, new tasks arise at the same time. This digital transformation is likely to interact with the ecological transformation towards a climate-friendly economy, both of which will shape the future of work. On top of that, the Covid-19 pandemic induced fast changes in the organisation and location of work. The aim of this conference is to bring together economists, sociologists and researchers from related fields to discuss frontier research on labour market effects of processes associated with the digital and ecological transformation. Special focus lies on the following questions:

  • How does the division of tasks between workers and machines develop?
  • Do green jobs differ from non-green jobs in terms of skills and human capital?
  • How does the digital and ecological transformation affect labour market, firm and individual outcomes?
  • How do job contents and tasks evolve and how do workers adapt?
  • What is the role of education and training in preparing the workforce for new knowledge and skills requirements?
  • How does the Covid-19 pandemic affect both types of transformations? And what does the pandemic reveal about the interactions between gender, education, work requirements and tasks?
  • How can policy cushion potential negative outcomes r

The conference focuses on technology, trade, and demographic changes and the ways they interact with employment, wages, and participation in the labor market, with a particular emphasis on the role of institutions and on labor markets during the COVID-19 crisis. Understanding these relationships is key in assessing the performance of the labor market and for the design of effective labor market policies. We invite empirical and theoretical contributions on these topics from all areas of economics and sociology with a focus on labor, education, health, or human resource management.

The conference will be held in-person. It is sponsored by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as part of the Priority Program 1764 “The German Labor Market in a Globalized World” and will also mark the end of the program.

The Covid crisis revived the interest in the topic of short-time work (sometimes also known as furlough schemes or work sharing). In many countries, the schemes were utilised in unprecendented ways. The Institute for Employment Research organises a one-day online workshop on May 13, 2022 that focuses on current research on short-time work. Contributions may address the Covid crisis or previous economic crises. Both theoretical and applied papers with both micro- and macroeconomic approaches are welcome.

The workshop provides the opportunity for timely exchange on cutting-edge research on a specific topic. Presentations and discussions should spur the debate on usage, effects and design of a crucial labour market instrument.

The vocational education system in Central and Eastern European countries (CEEC) is mainly school-based, with schools directly linked to large industrial conglomerates in communist times. Since the transition to a market economy it has been an uphill battle to connect vocational schools and newly emerging firms for workplace-based training. In particular, the region’s many small firms struggle to offer high-quality training, given the required investments and manpower. Yet, partly inspired by investors from German-speaking countries with their strong tradition of dual vocational education workplace-based training innovations have been evolving in increasing numbers in the region. What are the success stories so far and what are hurdles for rolling out dual educational training more systematically? What can players from different countries learn from each other?

The joined Graduate School (GradAB) of the IAB and the FAU invites young researchers who study topics in labor economics and sociology to its 13th interdisciplinary PhD workshop “Perspectives on (Un-) Employment”. The event provides an opportunity for graduate students to present their ongoing research and receive feedback from senior scholars who work at the forefront of labor market research. We seek theoretical and empirical contributions to the field of labor market research. Your paper may cover topics such as:

  • Unemployment, labor supply and labor demand
  • Inequality, poverty and discrimination
  • Evaluation of labor market institutions and policies
  • Wages and productivity
  • Occupations
  • Education, qualification and job tasks
  • Gender and family
  • Migration and international labor markets
  • Technological change and digitization
  • The impact of climate change/COVID-19 on the labor market
  • Methodology of labor market research