ZEW Researcher Receives Social Market Economy Research Award

Dr. Laura Pohlan, a researcher in the ZEW Research Group “Market Design”, received the 2020 “Forschungspreis Soziale Markwirtschaft” (“Social Market Economy Research Award”) by the Roman Herzog Institute (RHI) Munich on 7 October 2020. She was awarded the third prize for her dissertation on the social consequences of unemployment and the effects of direct and indirect state measures on employment. She wrote her dissertation while still working in the ZEW Research Department “Labour Markets and Human Resources”. The award ceremony was held online.

Laura Pohlan’s work “Essays on Unemployment, Job Search Behavior and Policy Interventions” examines the multiple causal effects of unemployment in the context of social exclusion. She shows that the feeling of social exclusion increases with the duration of unemployment and may even continue after taking up a job. She also investigates how social policies and technological innovation influence individual behaviour in job seeking and in what way they help to reintegrate unemployed individuals into the labour market.

The Roman Herzog Institute is an interdisciplinary think tank that addresses socio-political issues relating to both the future of work and ethics in the social market economy. The award is one of the highest endowed prizes in the field of economics and social sciences.