Volksbank Weinheim Stiftung and ZEW Award Research Prize to Two Post-Doctoral Researchers

The Volksbank Weinheim Stiftung and the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) awarded the “Future World of Work” (“Zukunft der Arbeitswelt”) research prize, now in its fifth year, to two outstanding dissertations. The winners, Dr. Katja Dlouhy (30) from the University of Mannheim and Dr. André Nolte (29), a researcher at ZEW, were presented with their awards at a reception hosted by Volksbank Weinheim in January 2018. Both researchers completed their doctorates the previous year and were awarded the highest possible grade of summa cum laude.

According to ZEW Director Thomas Kohl, who is a member of the selection jury, Dr. Dlouhy and Dr. Nolte’s submissions were chosen out of the eleven strong entries the jury received this year due to the “scientific excellence, practical relevance and strong empirical focus” of their work. “Both dissertations also stood out due to their high applicability, originality and innovative approach to problem-solving,” said Kohl in his explanation of the jury’s decision.

In her dissertation entitled “New Perspectives on Career Development and the Emergence of Career Patterns”, Dr. Katja Dlouhy dealt with a variety of different career paths using new empirical methods to analyse data from the Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP). “Dr. Dlouhy has developed an innovative approach which allows us to better predict which employees are more likely to leave a company at some point,” said ZEW Director Thomas Kohl. The paper also provides empirical evidence that disruption at the beginning of a person’s career is correlated with disruption later on in the progress of their career.

“New technologies can prevent search frictions on the labour market”

In his dissertation “Empirical Essays on Labor Economics and Digitization”, Dr. André Nolte looked at the effects of digitalisation on social and economic aspects in Germany as well as the political and economic transformation of the former GDR. One of his findings was that broadband internet has a positive impact of the search behaviour of unemployed people and leads to shorter periods of unemployment. “This main finding shows that new technology can reduce search frictions on the labour market,” said Thomas Kohl. Dr. Nolte also analysed the connection between broadband internet and violent crime as well as protracted wage development in the former GDR in relation to wages in West Germany.

“The submissions from both Katja Dlouhy and André Nolte showed particular creativity and scientific rigour in uncovering highly complex correlations and both represent extremely important contributions to solving current social problems,” said Kohl, summarising the decision made by the seven members of the jury, who included Professor Irene Bertschek, head of the ZEW Research Department “Digital Economy”.

Before pursuing her doctorate at the University of Mannheim and the University of Koblenz-Landau, Dr. Katja Dlouhy studied business economics and psychology. She currently works at the Chair of Business Administration, Human Resource Management and Leadership, at the University of Mannheim. Dr. André Nolte has studied economics at the University of Kassel, the European Business School in Dublin and at Rutgers University in Newark, and is currently a researcher in the ZEW Research Department “Labour Markets, Human Resources and Social Policy”.

Since 2013, the “Future World of Work” research award has been granted by the Volksbank Weinheim Stiftung and ZEW to honour young economists from the local region. The award for the best dissertation comes with a €3,000 prize.