About me

I am Nucleus Professor at the Department of Economics at Hamburg University and Professor at the Department of Economics at the University of Leuven. My research focuses on two main areas: worker shortages and labor supply, and population aging and health.

With regard to worker shortages and labor supply, I combine methods and models from behavioral, labor, and family economics to study the impact of social preferences, norms, and nonmonetary incentives on labor supply and inequalities in labor markets. I am particularly interested in labor supply choices of women and long-term unemployed individuals. Since most developed countries are approaching a period of labor shortages due to population aging, these questions are very relevant for public policy. Part of this research has been summarized in my ERC Consolidator grant “MORETHANMONEY: Nonwage attributes, gender, and the future of work”, a 5-year project which started in 2024.

With regard to population aging and health, I use methods from empirical industrial economics to analyze policy-relevant questions in the long-term care market. For example, I analyze whether entry and competition differ between for-profit and non-profit firms, and I analyze demand for long-term care in order to analyze the welfare impacts of subsidies for informal care. I also investigate health in a family context, for example, how matching on health and socio-economic status in the marriage market impacts inequalities in health and income over the life cycle.

I was a visiting scholar at a number of institutions such as Boston University, the Harvard Health Care Policy, Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Center of Population and Development Studies, the RAND Corporation and the University of York. Currently, I am Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, a Research Associate at the Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim (ZEW), as well as a member of the CESifo network.

Contact

Universität Hamburg
Fakultät für Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften
Fachbereich Volkswirtschaftslehre
Professur für VWL, insb. Empirische Gesundheitsökonomie
Esplanade 36
20354 Hamburg 

E-Mail: iris.kesternich@uni-hamburg.de