Bastian Schulz
Welcome to my website!
I am an Associate Professor of Economics at the Department of Economics and Business Economics, Aarhus University. I am also affiliated with IZA, CESifo, and PIREAU.
Research interests: labor economics, family economics, search-matching models, inequality
You can reach me by email: bastian.schulz@econ.au.dk.
My CV is available here: Download CV
I post recent news, paper updates, and upcoming presentations at the bottom of this page. For information on my research, teaching, and workshops, please use the sidebar.
Upcoming and recent presentations of my work:
LMU Munich (December 18, 2024): Families’ Career Investments and Firms’ Promotion Decisions
German Economic Association (Berlin, September 15-18): Joint Labor Search and the Taxation of Couples
European Economic Association (Rotterdam, August 26-30): Joint Labor Search and the Taxation of Couples
NBER Summer Institute, The Micro and Macro Perspectives of the Aggregate Labor Market (Cambridge, July 15-18): Job Displacement, Remarriage, and Marital Sorting
News:
December 2024: I am very grateful for two new grants from the Danish e-infrastructure Consortium (DeiC) and the Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF). These resources, including computation time at the European supercomputer LUMI, will help to advance my research agenda on interactions between labor and marriage markets.
September 2024: A new version of Job Displacement, Remarriage, and Marital Sorting is available. It also came out as IZA DP No. 17335, CESifo WP No. 11387 and CEP DP No. 2045.
March 2024: Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality is now R&R at the Journal of Labor Economics.
February 2024: Media coverage of our article Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality in the New York Times: When It Comes to Dating, Ambition Might Matter More Than Politics.
January 2024: A new and substantially extended version of your paper on career ambition and marriage market sorting is available. New title: Educational Ambition, Marital Sorting, and Inequality. Previously: Marital Sorting and Inequality: How Educational Categorization Matters".
January 2024: Media coverage of several of my papers in Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung: Weniger Scheidungen dank Hartz-Reformen (12/1/2014, in German). The article covers the papers "Marriage and Divorce under Labor Market Uncertainty", "Marriage and Divorce: The Role of Unemployment Insurance", and "Marital Sorting and Inequality: How Educational Categorization Matters".
Research Agenda:
My research combines micro data with insights from economic theory to better understand how heterogenous agents, such as workers and firms or men and women, match with each other (sorting). This approach helps elucidate trends in inequality and population structure (see chart).
Specifically, I examine how sorting influences labor market dynamics and inequality, and how it interacts with economic policy, e.g., labor market policy, tax policy, and policies that aim to improve gender equality. I use Danish register data, German social security data, and household surveys.
Currently, my focus is on the interactions between labor and marriage markets (joint equilibrium):
The labor market influences marriage, marital stability, and sorting through endogenous decisions about marriage and divorce, which are linked to labor market outcomes and transitions.
Families' choices (marriage, sorting, labor supply) and firms' hiring, training, and promotion decisions interact in shaping gender inequality.
For more details, see my Research Statement.
