About

Welcome to my website. 

I am the head of the research group Education and Human Potential at the Federal Institute for Population Research (BIB). I am also a research fellow at IZA Institute of Labor Economics, a fellow of the College for Interdisciplinary Educational Research (CIDER) and a member of the Standing Field Committees in Labour and Population Economics, as well as Education Economics of the German Economic Association. I earned my PhD from Freie Universität Berlin in cooperation with DIW Berlin's Graduate Center.

My primary research interests lie in the economics of human capital formation and the impact of public policies in this area, particularly with respect to education, family and health. I am also interested in factors affecting the balance between work and family life and their consequences for parents and children. I lead the DFG-funded WORK-MUM project, am part of the German team in the GUIDE project, which is establihing an international child cohort study on children's well-being, and contribute to the evaluation of the Startchancen-Programm (Start Opportunities Programme), the largest federal investment programme supporting schools with a high proportion of socio-economically disadvantaged students. 

I also study public policy impacts on parental leave, childcare, inequality in child well-being, and the societal consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

LATEST NEWS. 

20 February 2026: Delighted to join Standing Field Committees in Labour and Population Economics of the Verein für Socialpolitik.

20/21 November 2025: Together with Malin Mahlbacher, I organized a workshop on "Contemporary Challenges for Parents and Children"  in Berlin as part of my DFG-funded project "Understanding the role of maternal labour markets and workplace contexts for children’s development" [WORK-MUM].

2 November 2025: Our paper on "Overlooked Potential? Childcare Services and Ukrainian Refugee Mothers in Germany" has been accepted for publication at Demography. 

1 October 2025: Back from paternity leave. 

5 December 2024: Our paper on "Parental Leave, Worker Substitutability, and Firms' Employment" has been accepted for publication in The Economic Journal. 

Nov '24-Oct '25: I am on Paternity Leave for our third child :-) - Relatedly, check out our new paper on "Caring Dads" below!