Research Areas

This research area addresses the increasing complexity of modern economies and societies, driven by technological change, evolving labor and product markets, political polarization, and international conflicts. Its aim is to develop theoretical frameworks that explain how individual preferences, skills, information, and uncertainty interact with market and institutional structures to generate economic, social, and political outcomes.

The area advances microfounded economic theory to systematically analyze allocation mechanisms in complex environments. A key focus is on identifying economic, social, and political inefficiencies that arise from informational frictions, preference heterogeneity, and bounded rationality, and on studying how these constraints affect market outcomes and policy effectiveness.

Theory is developed in fields such as learning, mechanism design, matching, decentralized markets, and decision-making in democratic institutions, with particular attention to incorporating political feasibility and institutional constraints into models. This provides a solid conceptual foundation for the design and analysis of markets and public policies that are both robust and practically implementable.

This research area focuses on inequality of opportunity as a central challenge for social cohesion, economic performance, and democratic stability. It examines how group-based disparities, often rooted in the “lottery of birth”, shape opportunities over the life course and across generations, and how these disparities interact with meritocratic principles in modern societies.

The research investigates the determinants of unequal opportunities across socio-economic, ethnic, and gender dimensions, as well as their intersections. A key emphasis lies on understanding the choices and perceptions of influential actors, dominant groups and disadvantaged groups, and how these choices contribute to the persistence or reduction of inequality. The area also analyzes how economic shocks, crises, and policy responses affect equality of opportunity and may amplify or mitigate existing disparities.

Combining insights from economics, psychology, and sociology, the research employs experimental and data-driven approaches to study opportunity formation in families and neighborhoods, schools, and labor markets. The overarching goal is to provide evidence that informs policies aimed at fostering social mobility, resilience, and social cohesion in increasingly polarized and crisis-prone societies.

This research area examines how labor markets and organizations can adapt to structural change and contribute to a “good jobs” economy in the face of technological progress, demographic change, and recurring economic crises. It focuses on understanding how individuals can find and retain good jobs, how firms can create them, and how labor market institutions can support these processes.

The research adopts a broad perspective on job quality, viewing good jobs as providing not only adequate material rewards but also psychological well-being and decent working conditions. A central goal is to identify the difficulties and opportunities associated with creating and sustaining good jobs across different stages of the working life, from education and labor market entry to job mobility and career development.

The area further analyzes the characteristics of resilient workforces and organizations, including the role of skills, training and re-skilling, matching between workers and firms, workplace organization, leadership, and management practices. By combining insights from economics, management, and psychology, this research area provides evidence to inform labor market policies and organizational designs that promote resilience, well-being, and inclusive prosperity.

This research area studies how the design of markets, organizations, and institutions can shape human behavior and help societies respond to major economic and social challenges, including climate change, health crises, demographic change, and market failures. Since formal and informal rules structure individual incentives and interactions, effective institutional design can be a powerful tool for promoting cooperation, resilience, and social welfare.

Building on insights from behavioral economics and psychology, this area adopts a behavioral economic design perspective that explicitly accounts for bounded rationality, social preferences, and deviations from standard decision-making models. A central goal is to analyze how market and organizational design can respond to crises and uncertainty, and to identify the constraints and unintended consequences that arise when institutions interact with real-world human behavior.

Research topics include the engineering of cooperation in societies and organizations, the design implications of behavioral biases, and the dynamic interplay between institutions and behavior. The resulting insights inform robust and practical designs of markets and organizations that remain effective under stress and change.

This research area studies how economic and social inequalities affect macroeconomic, financial, and political stability, and which forms of inequality pose risks to long-run prosperity. It examines the distributional consequences of policy changes and analyzes which reforms are politically feasible in heterogeneous societies.

The research takes both a domestic and an international perspective. At the domestic level, it focuses on how households, firms, regions, and financial institutions are differently affected by policies related to business cycles, housing markets, welfare systems, and inflation. At the international level, it studies cross-border linkages through energy markets, climate policy, financial systems, and development policies in a changing global order.

A central focus lies on the interaction between inequality, financial markets, and macroeconomic dynamics. Understanding how distributional outcomes shape political support for policies, and how policies in turn affect financial and macroeconomic stability, is key to designing reforms that are both effective and sustainable. By combining insights from macroeconomics, finance, and political economy, this research area provides a framework for assessing stability-oriented policies in an increasingly unequal and crisis-prone world.

This research area studies the political responses to major societal challenges such as climate change, rising inequality, economic crises, public health threats, and international conflict. Even when policies are welfare-improving in principle, they may fail due to limited political support, strategic behavior by elites, or institutional constraints. Understanding the sources of political success and failure is therefore central to effective public policy.

Bringing together insights from economics, political science, and psychology, the research examines both short-term policy responses to disruptive crises and long-term reform processes. A key focus is on identifying policies that are not only welfare-enhancing but also politically feasible and legitimate. The research analyzes how political rhetoric and communication shape public support for reforms, how elite decision-making and political compromise emerge, and how populism affects democratic policymaking.

In addition, the research area investigates policy responses to global security risks and the conditions under which international cooperation can be sustained. By studying the long-run effects of policy action and inaction, this area contributes to a deeper understanding of how durable and effective public policies can be designed in increasingly polarized and crisis-prone societies.