Klaus F. Zimmermann

The 2020 Annual Congress of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES/SGVS) on June 18-19 takes place at the University of Zürich organized by the Department of Economics. GLO Fellow and GLO Country Lead Switzerland Rainer Winkelmann heads the Organizing Committee that includes also GLO Fellow David Dorn.

Paper submission deadline: February 1, 2020. All fields of economics and statistics are welcome. PDF Call for Papers.

There will be keynote lectures and special sessions on the topic of Digital Transformation with speakers including: Christina Caffarra (CRA), Hal Varian (Google) and John van Reenen (MIT).

CALL FOR PAPERS: 2020 Annual Congress of the Swiss Society for Economics and Statistics, June 18-19, 2020, Zurich, Switzerland.

The Department of Economics at the University of Zürich is proud to host the Annual Meeting of the Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics (SSES/SGVS) on June 18 (Thursday) and June 19 (Friday), 2020.

Topics

Submissions of papers across all fields of economics and statistics are welcome. In addition, there will be keynote lectures and special sessions on the topic of Digital Transformation. Speakers include: Christina Caffarra (CRA), Hal Varian (Google) and John van Reenen (MIT).

Paper submission

Authors are invited to submit their preliminary or complete papers electronically (PDF files only) to: https://www.sgvs.ch/conferences/sses2020
Paper submission deadline: February 1, 2020.

Papers will be selected by a Program Committee consisting of a panel of scholars from member institutions of the SSES. The submitting authors will be notified of the Program Committee’s decision by April 1, 2020, at the latest.

The registration deadline for the conference is May 1, 2020.

Contributed Sessions

In addition, there will be a possibility to propose contributed sessions (with 3-4 speakers each) on a specific topic. If you are interested, please write an email with the topic and the names of the contributors by December 31, 2019 at the latest to: rainer.winkelmann@econ.uzh.ch. These proposals will be evaluated and you will be informed about the decision by January 15, 2020.

SSES Young Economist Award

Authors who wish to be considered for the 2020 SSES Young Economist Award should indicate this when submitting their paper.

Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics

A selection of contributions related to the special theme will be published in a proceedings volume of the Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics (http://www.sjes.ch).

Organizing Committee
Rainer Winkelmann (Chair), David Dorn, Marek Pycia, Florian Scheuer, Ulrich Woitek

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The second day of the Second GLO – Renmin University of China Conference on Labor Economics in Beijing finished on 8 December 2019. More details and full program; report on day 1; place: North Hall, Century Hall, RUC.

December 8, 2019.

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The first day of the Second GLO – Renmin University of China Conference on Labor Economics in Beijing finished on 7 December 2019. More details and full program; place: North Hall, Century Hall, RUC. Conference organizers are GLO Fellows Corrado Giulietti and Jun Han. The event is part of the GLO China Research Cluster, which is lead by Corrado Giulietti, who is also a GLO Research Director.

The conference was opened by Corrado Giulietti, Jun Han, GLO President Klaus F. Zimmermann, and Deputy Dean and GLO Fellow Zhong Zhao.

Keynote speakers of the event were GLO Fellows Shi Li of Zhejiang University and Xi Chen of Yale University. The conference saw 8 further paper presentations.

GLO Director Matloob Piracha will give one of the 5 papers scheduled on Sunday, the second day of the event.

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On his one-week trip to Beijing/China, Klaus F. Zimmermann, President of the Global Labor Organization (GLO) and Bonn University, arrived on December 5 to participate in a one-day event:

For the Future: International Conference on Vocational Education and Training Development

The event took place in the Conference Center, Beijing International Hotel, Beijing/China. It was hosted by the China Development Research Foundation (CDRF) and The Chinese Society of Technical and Vocational Education (CSTVE) and supervised by the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China and the Development Research Center of the State Council.

Next to following an intensive program with over 300 participants, Zimmermann was the Luncheon Keynote Speaker on the topic “Vocational Education & Training: Socio-Economic Sustainable Development“.

Key topics:

• Vocational systems and youth unemployment
• A roadmap to vocational education and training
• General education versus vocational education
• Challenges in the digital age

Central messages:

• The Youth-to-Adult Unemployment Ratio of Germany With Its Dual Vocational Training System is Far Below Others in the Western World.
• Vocational systems are a valued alternative beyond the core of general education.
• Vocational high school graduates have better employment outcomes than general high school graduates.
• The dual system is more effective in helping youth transition into employment than alternative academic or vocational training.
• In the digital age, ICT skills are obviously important, but success comes with the development of non-cognitive skills.

Selective references:

• Klaus F. Zimmermann, Costanza Biavaschi, Werner Eichhorst, Corrado Giulietti, Michael J. Kendzia, Alexander Muravyev, Janneke Pieters, Núria Rodríguez-Planas & Ricarda Schmidl (2013), Youth Unemployment and Vocational Training”, Foundations and Trends® in Microeconomics (2013), 9: 1-157.
• Werner Eichhorst, Núria Rodríguez-Planas, Ricarda Schmidl & Klaus F. Zimmermann, A Roadmap to Vocational Education and Training in Industrialized Countries, Industrial and Labor Relations Review (2015), 68: 314-337.
• Pierre Cahuc, Stéphane Carcillo, Ulf Rinne & Klaus F. Zimmermann, Youth Unemployment in Old Europe: The Polar Cases of France and Germany, IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, (2013), 2:18
• Huzeyfe Torun & Semih Tumen, Do Vocational High School Graduates Have Better Employment Qutcomes Than General High School Graduates?, International Journal of Manpower (2019), 40: 1364-1388.
• Shubha Jayaram, Tara Hill & Daniel Plaut, Training Models for Employment in the Digital Economy, Results for Development Institute (2013).

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The new European Union Commission under the leadership of Ursula von der Leyen started to work on December 1, 2019 with the aim to re-vitalize Europe. On this occasion, GLO President Klaus F. Zimmermann was visiting Brussels on December 3 to prepare a European strategy of his organization.

After a Christmas shopping tour on the Grand Place, he was visiting Bruegel, the economic think tank, to discuss research and policy projects with GLO Fellow Martin Kahanec. Kahanec, who is a Professor at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna & Budapest and a Mercator Senior Visiting Fellow at Bruegel, acts also the GLO Cluster Lead for EU Mobility.

Zimmermann, a Honorary Professor of Maastricht University and Co-Director POP at UNU-MERIT, was further visiting the Campus Brussels of Maastricht University to participate in a book launch and moderate a respective policy panel. The new book Una segunda oportunidad para Europa (A Second Chance for Europe) calls upon to rethink and reboot the European Union, obviously right in time for the fresh start of Europe, Ursula von der Leyen attempts to organize.

The book is authored by GLO Fellow Jo Ritzen, a Professorial Fellow of UNU-MERIT and its School of Governance. UNU-MERIT is a joint institute of the United Nations University (UNU) and Maastricht University. Ritzen is a former Minister of Education, Culture, and Science of the Netherlands, served in the Dutch Cabinet at the Maastricht Treaty, a former Vice President of the World Bank and former President of Maastricht University.

The book was presented in Spanish by Salvador Pérez-Moreno, Professor of Economic Policy, University of Malaga, and discussed in Spanish by Javier López, Member of the European Parliament. Zimmermann moderated also the panel discussion between Jo Ritzen, Salvador Pérez-Moreno and Javier López.

The video of this panel event is available HERE.

Group photo below from the right: López, Ritzen, Pérez-Moreno and Zimmermann. MORE DETAILS.

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