Supervised by
Prof. Frédéric Docquier

Cross-border mobility, Housing market developments, and inequalities
(CRHOUSINQ)

This project aims to uncover the interdependencies between economic concentration, labor mobility, housing market developments and inequality. It focuses on the economy of Luxembourg and the Greater Region, characterized by high economic growth, booming housing prices and dynamic labor mobility (through both immigration and cross-border commuting), features that can also be observed in other regional poles of growth around the world. The project aims to shed light on the sustainability, drivers and distributional effects of the core-periphery developments observed in the Greater Region.

The implications of temperature for social interactions, work organization and well-Being
(TEMPORG)

Extreme temperatures have become more frequent over recent decades, with the trend expected to continue into the future. Prior evidence has shown that extreme temperatures alter the way in which individuals allocate their time between leisure and work, which can have important implications for the labor market and well-being. This project will provide evidence on the causal impacts of extreme temperatures on (i) social interactions and (ii) worktime arrangements, as well as (iii) whether these effects have long-term implications for well-being.

Supervised by
Dr Audrey Bousselin

Investigating the consequences of public investments in Early Childhood Education and Care services for the quality of provision and child development
(ChilDev)

In most OECD countries, an increasing number of children aged 0-2 are spending a greater amount of their time in formal early childcare (ECC). ECC is generally recognized as an effective mean to expand skills that are important for the development of treated children as well as for income and educational opportunities. Children with different characteristics and background of origin may benefit differently from ECC attendance. The goal of this project is to provide innovative causal evidence about the effect of different margins (in term of coverage, affordability and quality) of ECC attendance on the cognitive and non-cognitive development of the treated children.

Supervised by
Dr. Paul Kilgarriff

Impact of teleworking on urban structures
(TELE-SIM)

The pandemic has revealed preferences for greater levels of teleworking (working from home). With many workers and employers in favour of more teleworking post-pandemic, this will have consequences for how cities organise themselves. For example, the impact of teleworking on urban structures in the post-pandemic city requires further empirical testing for Europe. Teleworking decreases commuting costs, making longer commutes more affordable. Lower commuting costs increase the household budget for housing enabling people to move to larger less expensive houses in the suburbs. These factors will influence the population density profile. From our results, we can say with a greater level of certainty what the impact of teleworking on density is for European cities. One of the major outputs from the project will be a dashboard that will disseminate the results, research and data to both an expert and non-expert audience supporting open-source reproducible research.

Supervised by
Prof. Konstantinos Tatsiramos

Social Origins And Intergenerational Persistence Of Socioeconomic Outcomes
(ORIGINS)

Growing economic inequality and low social mobility raise important concerns about social cohesion; and require tracing individuals back to their social origins to address inequality of opportunity that can affect their potential to succeed in life. The project ORIGINS will expand and deepen our knowledge on the causes of inequality and its persistence by studying the influence of social origins on individual socioeconomic trajectories. Unpacking the origins of existing inequalities and the way in which they are passed on from parents to children is key for understanding their consequences for social cohesion in the long run.

Supervised by
Dr Sabine Doerry

European Financial Centres In Transition
(FINCITY)

FINCITY is a multidisciplinary research project that focusses on how major global events coincide with broader processes of economic restructuring and financialisation in Luxembourg, Frankfurt, and Dublin—three of Europe’s most significant financial centres. More specifically, it aims to understand how these cities and other major European financial centres have been restructured in response to Brexit— which has expelled a large number of financial services firms from the UK, and COVID-19— which has redistributed population away from major urban centres toward smaller agglomerations (McCarthy and Smith, 2020), and fundamentally altered the ‘labourscape’ in favour of telework (Belzunegui-Eraso and Erro-Garcés, 2020).