ZEW Honours Two Young Researchers

The Mannheim Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) has awarded two young researchers with the Heinz König Young Scholar Award. The winners are Nicholas Patrick Frazier of the Rice University in Houston, Texas, and Jan Tilly of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.

Due to the enormous amount of high-quality papers submitted, the jury decided to hand the award to two young researchers. The ZEW award honoured the work of Nick Frazier on uncertainty effects in the working schedules of employees, as well as Jan Tilly's study on employment and welfare effects of short-time work in Germany during the recession from 2008 to 2010.

The annual Heinz König Young Scholar Award of ZEW comes with an endowment of 5,000 euros and includes the opportunity to spend an extended research visit at ZEW. This year, the research award was donated by Professor Wolfgang Franz, former ZEW President and former chairman of the German Council of Economic Experts. Due to this year's selection of two winners, the endowment was shared equally among Nick Frazier and Jan Tilly. Professor Andreas Peichl, head of the ZEW Research Group "International Distribution and Redistribution", handed over the Heinz König Young Scholar Award 2016 at the end of the 18th Summer Workshop for Young Economists.

Awarded studies on overtime payments and short-term work

In his work, Nick Frazier determines the minimum amount of the additional compensation so that employees would accept uncertain working hours. In his analysis Frazier considers two scenarios to measure such compensation: in the first scenario, the employees' work schedule is set at least three weeks in advance; in the second scenario, employees are offered to reduce their working hours by ten per cent. In the end, both scenarios reveal that the accepted wage is lower for a position which includes fixed working hours.

In his study on short-term work in Germany, Jan Tilly has observed significant employment effects. Accordingly, it is possible to save one job by having, on average, five employees work short-time schedules. For the study, a new set of data was used including all employees and businesses in Nuremberg and the surrounding area.

ZEW Summer School deals with policy evaluation

The Heinz König Young Scholar Award is named after the late founding director of ZEW, Professor Heinz König, who died in 2002. The award recognises excellent empirical papers by up-and-coming researchers. In keeping with Heinz König’s ideas, ZEW has no intention of adding yet another award to the multitude of prizes for established researchers, but instead promotes talented economists in the early stages of their career.

The ZEW Summer Workshop 2016 focused on structural models for policy evaluation. The aim of the event is to regularly bring together young economists and renowned scholars. The keynote speakers of this year's workshop included Professor Jérôme Adda from the Università Commerciale Luigi Bocconi in Milan, Professor Christopher Flinn from the New York University, and Professor Jean-Marc Robin, who teaches both at the French University Sciences Po in Paris and the University College London.

For more information please contact

Martin Zecher, Telefon +49(0)621/1235-156, E-Mail zecher@zew.de