Björn Fischer-Weckemann
(formerly Fischer)
Postdoctoral Researcher, ZEW Mannheim
I am a Postdoctoral Researcher at ZEW Mannheim in the Department Labor Markets and Social Insurances and an IZA Fellow. I got my PhD from Freie Universität Berlin and the DIW Graduate Center. My research interests lie in the intersection of health and labor economics and the consequences of demographic change.
Most recently, I could aquire funding from the German pension fund (FNA) to start a project studying the impact of changing task composition and future pension policy on the labor supply and health trajectories of older workers.
Since joining ZEW I published a NBER working paper on the effects of a German Disability Insurance reform on public benefit take-up and the connection to private insurance take-up using a general equilibrium model. In another project, I develop a comprehensive life-cycle model of elder parent care and work to evaluate options that address pressing conflicts between pension and long-term care (LTC) policy. (joint with Thorben Korfhage). I find that increased retirement ages negatively impact informal care provision to parents. The demand for formal care increases as a result. Further, dynamic incentives of the LTC insurance can alleviate negative impacts on informal care provision. In my paper published in the Journal of Health Economics (JHE) (joint with Kai-Uwe Müller) I find that increased retirement ages decrease personal care provided by women to frail elderly (informal care). Together with Han Ye and Stefan Etgeton I estimate the effects of increased retirement ages on savings behavior of middle aged women (Accepted in Journal of Public Economics).
You can find my Curriculum Vitae here.
Contact: bjoern.fischer[at]zew.de
Address: ZEW – Leibniz-Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung, Arbeitsmärkte und Sozialversicherungen, L7 1 , 68161 Mannheim
Fields: Labor Economics, Applied Microeconometrics, Public Economics, Health Economics, Economics of Aging
References: Prof. Dr. Nicolas Ziebarth, ZEW Mannheim and University of Mannheim, Prof. Dr. Peter Haan, DIW Berlin and Free University Berlin, Prof. Pierre-Carl Michaud PhD, HEC Montréal, Han Ye, Assistant Professor, Department of Economics, University of Mannheim