JProf. Amelie Schiprowski and Prof. Johannes Wohlfart, two researchers from the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy who were appointed to the Cluster during the first funding period, have each been awarded one of the prestigious ERC Starting Grants worth €1.5 million. The European Research Council (ERC) awards Starting Grants to support outstanding researchers at the beginning of their careers. Amelie Schiprowski and Johannes Wohlfart will use the funding to carry out their own research projects over the next five years.
Labor economics: Launching a career in a challenging job market
Amelie Schiprowski is an Assistant Professor of Applied Microeconomics at ECONtribute at the University of Bonn. She has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant for her project „Entry-Level Hiring in Tightening Labor Markets: Frictions, Firm Heterogeneity and Public Policy” (ENTRYHIRE). In the project, Schiprowski studies how firms hire and train entry-level employees in the face of tightening labor markets. How is demographic change altering the matching process of young workers and firms? What factors are complicating this process? And what is the impact of labor market policy?
“We need a sound empirical understanding of entry-level labor markets to find effective answers to this phenomenon,” says Amelie Schiprowski. With her project, she aims to provide a foundation for evidence-based labor market policies that improve the matching between young workers and firms. She is focusing on the German apprenticeship market, which serves as an empirical ‘laboratory’ for analyzing entry-level labor markets. The economist is very pleased with her funding: “The grant provides me with the time and financial resources to advance a new research agenda, together with a team of postdocs and doctoral researchers.”
Amelie Schiprowski studied economics at Sciences Po and École Polytechnique in Paris before going on to obtain her doctorate from the University of Potsdam in 2018. In 2019, she was appointed to the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy and is an Assistant Professor of Applied Microeconomics at the University of Bonn.
Macroeconomics and finance: How are economic expectations formed?
Johannes Wohlfart receives an ERC Starting Grant for his project „Modes of Expectation Formation in Macro and Finance (MODES)“. He is a Professor for Economics at ECONtribute at the University of Cologne. In his ERC project, he will study under which conditions people adopt different approaches to form expectations about the economy and financial markets.
How do people form expectations about future inflation, unemployment, or stock markets? When do people rely on simple rules-of-thumb, and when do they invest more time and deliberation? Which rules do they use? And how are these approaches to form expectations reflected in individual decision-making and economy-wide outcomes? Wohlfart’s project builds on a novel survey battery that includes an AI-based chat conversation, which he combines with experiments, administrative data on economic and financial behavior, and macroeconomic models. “With this project, I aim to contribute to the broader goal of developing a unified account of expectation formation in macroeconomics and finance,” says Wohlfart. “The ERC funding will give me the time and resources to dedicate the next years to working on this exciting topic.”
Johannes Wohlfart holds a master’s degree in economics from the University of Oxford and received his doctorate from Goethe University Frankfurt in 2019. In 2024, he was appointed to the Cluster of Excellence ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy and is a Professor of Economics at the University of Cologne.