Leibniz Dissertation Award for Cäcilia vom Baur
AwardsLeibniz Association Honours ZEW Researcher
The Leibniz Association, of which ZEW Mannheim is a member, presents an annual award for the best doctoral thesis of the year. This year’s prize in the category “Humanities and Social Sciences” is awarded to Cäcilia vom Baur, PhD, for her dissertation completed at ZEW’s “Labour Markets and Social Insurance” Research Unit. Her work examines the interactions between technological change and the labour market.
ZEW President Professor Achim Wambach, PhD considers this recognition a great success: “My warmest congratulations go to Cäcilia vom Baur for her outstanding dissertation. It compellingly shows that technological change is not just a question of introducing new machines or software but is essentially driven by trainees and young employees. This is not only an academically outstanding piece of work – its findings are also of great political interest, for instance regarding the direction of labour market and education policy.”
The award holds special significance for Cäcilia vom Baur, now a researcher and Big Data Junior Research Group Leader in Labor and Education Economics at the ifo Institute, as well as a postdoc at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. She says: “I am thrilled to receive this award. It is a wonderful acknowledgement of my many years of research. I am especially grateful for the academic network provided by ZEW, which enriched and shaped my dissertation in numerous ways. I would also like to thank my two supervisors, Anna Salomons and Ulrich Zierahn-Weilage – they have been a great inspiration and support.”
The effects of technological change on the labour markets
The dissertation “Technological Change: Origins and Impacts in the Labour Market” explores the implications of advancing technology for labour markets. Among other things, vom Baur analyses how the shortages of young workers affects the willingness of companies to adopt new technologies and how technological progress is reflected in the range of professional qualifications.
Completed at Utrecht University, the dissertation has already been recognised with the “Future World of Work” research award and the prize for the best education economics dissertation of 2023/2024 by the Verein für Socialpolitik. The dissertation was written while Cäcilia vom Baur was a researcher at ZEW’s “Labour Markets and Social Insurance” Research Unit. It was supervised by Professor Anna Salomons and Dr. Ulrich Zierahn-Weilage. Zierahn-Weilage himself worked at ZEW for many years before becoming an associate professor in Utrecht. To this day, there is a close cooperation between him and the ZEW Research Unit he used to work in.
About the award
The Leibniz Dissertation Award is presented annually for the best dissertations from Leibniz institutes in the categories “Humanities and Social Sciences” and “Natural and Technical Sciences”. In addition to receiving an outstanding rating, the award-winning theses must be distinguished by their interdisciplinary significance, practical relevance and publications in specialist journals or presentations at specialist conferences. The Leibniz Association thus honours two outstanding dissertations from its nearly 100 member institutes. The dissertation prize is endowed with 5,000 euros each.
