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• Emission Standards in the European Car Market

  Funding agency: OeNB Jubilaeumsfonds

  Project amount: € 298.000,00

  Project duration: 36 months

  Project team: Philipp Schmidt-Dengler (Project Lead)

  Short description:

  This project examines the economic impact of European emissions regulations on the passenger car market.  It asks the following question: How do environmental regulations change prices, profits, and the behavior of manufacturers—and what are the consequences for consumers in Europe? The aim is to gain critical insights into the economic impact of environmental regulations in the automotive industry and to offer efficient strategies for meeting future emission targets.  
• Workshop on International Economic Networks (WIEN) 2026

  Funding agencies: Hardegg'sche Stiftung, FIW, UKRI’s Economic and Social Research Council

  Project number: DP374017

  Project amount: € 35.000,00

  Project duration: 01.11.2025-31.12.2026

  Organizers: Harald Fadinger, Alejandro Cuñat, Antràs Pol, Kalina Manova
• Teleworking and the Environment: Exploring Direct and Rebound Effects of Working from Home

  Funding agency: ÖAW

  Project number: DATA 2024-06 WFH-REB

  Project amount: € 276.050,50

  Project duration:  01.07.2025 – 31.12.2027

  Project team: Beate Thies (Project Lead), Lennart Ziegler (Co-Project Lead/WU Wien), Omar Bamieh (Co-Project Lead) 

  Short description:

  To mitigate climate change, policymakers are striving to reduce CO2 emissions through various measures such as carbon pricing and fuel efficiency standards. Political support for ambitious carbon pricing policies, however, is generally low. Emissions from passenger cars increased between 2000 and 2019 in the EU, mostly due to growing transport volumes. Increasing traffic volumes likely also explain why, despite notable improvements over the last decades, air quality levels still violate guidelines set by the World Health Organization in most urban areas across Europe. This project aims to investigate whether working from home (WFH)—which has surged due to the recent COVID-19 pandemic—can contribute to solving these environmental issues. Remote work typically results in decreased commuting frequency, potentially reducing CO2 emissions and air pollution from road transport.  However, a rebound effect may occur if workers relocate or switch jobs, leading to increased commuting distances. If WFH options cause workers to commute less frequently but over longer distances, the net effect on emissions is unclear.

  In this project, we will analyze how WFH affects commuting patterns and their environmental impact by exploiting recent expansions in remote-work options following the COVID-19 pandemic. We will compare trends in commuting distances and frequencies between workers in jobs with high and with low remote-work potential before and after the pandemic. Jobs with limited remote-work potential serve as a control group that captures common time trends because those workers cannot benefit from new WFH options. By pairing the results with vehicle fuel consumption data, we can quantify the impact on CO2 emissions.

  Our analysis will be based on novel administrative data from Austria. We will link worker-level and firm-level records from multiple registers within the Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC). This includes data on commuting distances, a wide range of worker and firm characteristics, and unique information on the extent of remote work, which is available because, starting in 2021, WFH days must be reported on workers’ pay slips. We will pair this with satellite-derived data on municipality-level particulate matter concentrations, enabling us to evaluate the commuting-related effects of WFH on air quality.

  The hypothesis underlying our project is that remote work has reduced commuting frequencies but has also triggered changes in commuting distances due to worker relocation and job switching. We expect that the increase in remote work has caused a reduction in CO2 emissions and urban air pollution; however, this reduction is smaller than what one would expect in the absence of a rebound effect. The magnitudes of the counteracting effects on commuting and the resulting changes in environmental outcomes are empirical questions that we plan to answer with this project.
• Workshop on International Economic Networks (WIEN) 2025

  Funding agencies: Heinrich Graph Hardegg’sche Stiftung, FIW, University of Vienna, wiiw, and the ERC/UKRI under Horizon Europe Guarantee

  Project number: DP374016

  Project amount: € 30.000,00

  Project duration: 09.01.2025-31.12.2025

  Organizers: Pol Antràs (Harvard), Alejandro Cuñat (University of Vienna), Harald Fadinger (University of Vienna), and Kalina Manova (UCL)

  Workshop on International Economic Networks (WIEN) 2025
• Industrieökonomischer Ausschuss 2024

  Förderagentur: Hardegg'sche Stiftung

  Projektnummer: DP374015

  Projektsumme: € 10.000,00

  Projektdauer: 01.12.2024-31.12.2025 

  Projektteam: Philipp Schmidt-Dengler, Christine Zulehner

  Beschreibung:
  Die „Sitzung des Ausschusses für Industrieökonomik des Vereins für Socialpolitik“ ist ein Workshop, in dem Mitglieder des Ausschusses, viele davon führende Vertreter ihres Faches in der DACH Region, ihre Forschungsarbeiten vorstellen und diskutieren. Die Tagung findet jährlich statt. Im Jahr 2025 übernimmt das Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre der Universität Wien die Organisation.
• Workshop on International Economic Networks (WIEN) 2024

  Funding agencies: Hardegg'sche Stiftung, FIW, UKRI’s Economic and Social Research Council.

  Project number: DP374014

  Project amount: € 33 673,00

  Project duration: 02.012024-31.12.2024

  Organizers: Pol Antràs (Harvard), Alejandro Cuñat (University of Vienna), and Kalina Manova (UCL)

  Workshop on International Economic Networks (WIEN) 2024 
• Cross-country evidence on information evaluation competency

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: PAT2819324

  Project amount: € 261.991,86

  Project duration: 02.09.2024-01.09.2026

  Project team: Christian Koch (Project Lead). Cam Celeski (Project Employee)

  Short description:

  In an increasingly digitalized world, consumers and citizens need to be able to evaluate information critically. This is especially important as much of the information they encounter may be strategically distorted. Companies often have incentives not to fully inform consumers or mislead them to promote their interests. This happens, for example, through advertising on social media, where the information presented is often influenced by paying parties. Such distorted information can also resonate in so-called "filter bubbles" and "echo chambers," where consumers only see information that confirms their existing beliefs. Our research project examines how people from different countries cope with this challenge. We are conducting an online study with representative samples from Austria/Germany, the USA, and China. In doing so, we measure participants` ability to critically evaluate information and analyze which factors influence their "skepticism." We are particularly interested in how different regulatory environments and individual factors such as education and work experience affect this ability. Additionally, we are investigating whether simple educational measures, such as short explanatory videos, can improve the ability to critically evaluate information. In these videos, we explain the basic mechanisms of information distortion and provide practical tips on how to better assess information. Through a follow-up study with our Austrian-German sample, we examine whether and how these videos improve participants` information evaluation skills in the long term. Our goal is to identify ways to better protect consumers and citizens from misinformation. We hope that our research will help raise awareness of the importance of critical information evaluation and develop practical solutions to improve this crucial skill. 
• Misperceptions about the welfare state: Immigration and health behavior

  Funding agency: WWTF

  Project number: Project ESS22-23

  Project amount: € 341’000,-

  Project duration: 01/2024 – 08/2027

  Project team: Christian Koch (Project lead), Jean-Robert Tyran (Co-Lead), Ada Kovaliukaite (Project employee)

   

  Short desciption:

  Der Wohlfahrtsstaat in modernen Gesellschaften ist groß und komplex, was ihn für die Bevölkerung oft schwer fassbar und verständlich macht. Doch die Akzeptanz und Unterstützung des Wohlfahrtsstaates hängt auch von den Wahrnehmungen der Bürger*innen ab. Dieses Projekt untersucht die Beeinflussbarkeit der Bürger*innen durch eine Kombination von Registerdaten und experimentellen Informationsinterventionen, die in eine Befragung einer repräsentativen Stichprobe der österreichischen Wählerschaft eingebettet sind. Ein Schwerpunkt der Studie liegt auf migrationsspezifischen Aspekten des Wohlfahrtsstaates. Die Kombination von Register- und Umfragedaten ermöglicht es dabei, ein detailliertes Bild davon zu zeichnen, wer in Österreich was über den Wohlfahrtsstaat weiß und denkt, und welche Wahrnehmungen beeinflusst und verändert werden können. Wir führen sowohl positive als auch negative Informationsinterventionen durch. Damit können wir testen, ob einseitige Informationskampagnen die Unterstützung für den Wohlfahrtsstaat gleichermaßen stärken oder schwächen können, und welche Wählergruppen am empfänglichsten für solche einseitigen Informationen sind.
• Unveiling emotional dimensions of politics to foster European democracy (ENCODE)

  Funding agency: Horizon Europe

  Project amount: € 341.000,00

  Project duration: 01.06.2024-31.05.2027

  Project team: Jean-Robert Tyran (Co-Project Lead); Jörg Matthes (Lead), Arnand Murugesan (Project Employee)

  Short desciption:

  Integrating emotions into policymaking

  Emotions significantly influence political choices and participation, yet building democratically meaningful emotional narratives remains unexplored. This gap often leads to political depolarisation and a lack of trust in governance. Traditional policymaking fails to account for the emotional dimensions of public engagement, undermining effective communication. Addressing this issue is crucial for enhancing democratic processes. In this context, the EU-funded ENCODE project aims to decode emotional meanings and incorporate them into policy-making, promoting positive emotional engagement. Its ‘affective pluralisation’ framework guides research in eight European countries using diverse methods like sentiment analysis and biometric research. The findings will produce practical outputs, including best practice catalogues for tackling social media disinformation, handbook of emotional politics of the future narratives and policy recommendations.

   

   
• Steering Online Search using Big Data

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: P 37282-G

  Project amount: € 372.429,75

  Project duration: 01.07.2024-30.06.2028

  Project team: Maarten Janssen (Project Lead), Jacopo Gambato (Co-Lead), Sebastian Ertner (Co-Lead)

   

  Short desciption:

  Buying and selling products on the internet is affecting the lives of many people. This project studies the impact of digital search platforms, such as Google, Tripadvisor or Booking.com, to bring together supply and demand. Consumers search for certain keywords and these platforms present a ranking of firms that may be keyword relevant thereby steering consumers to search firms in a certain order, affecting their eventual purchases. Search platforms may use large datasets on consumer search activities and their purchases to produce personalizing rankings. Search platforms (as gateways to online markets) may rank the products in the order they think would best fit the consumer preferences, but they may also obfuscate the ranking. Many of these search platforms also have so-called “sponsored positions” at the top of their ranking where firms compete and pay to be included. To evaluate the welfare consequences of the behaviour of search platforms, the effects of steering search should be modelled explicitly. This project aims to evaluate the different incentives of platforms to steer consumer search and firm behaviour, and how this shapes the competitiveness of consumer markets and consumer well-being. By delving into the details of the online search process and how it is affected by search platforms, the project not only aims to make important innovations to the academic search literature, but also aims to address important policy concerns related to online markets that are at the core of the EU Digital Market and Digital Service Acts.
• Parental Leave and Career Trajectories of Men and Women in Austria

  Funding agency: Vienna Science and Technology Fund (WWTF) 

  Project number: 10.47379/ESS22054

  Project amount: EUR 434.810,-

  Project duration: 01.01.2024 – 31.12.2026

  Project team: Principal Investigator: Alice Kügler (CEU GmbH - Central European University Private University)Co-Principal Investigator(s): Lennart Ziegler (University of Vienna), Omar Bamieh (University of Vienna)

   

  Short desciption:

  Our project consists of three parts that investigate recent parental leave choices in Austria. We combine a number of relevant administrative datasets at the new Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC) in a novel way to assess the leave-taking patterns of women and men and their consequences for future labor market outcomes such as employment and wages. Moreover, we examine to what extent financial incentives, career concerns, and social norms can explain parental leave choices.

  First, we descriptively analyze recent patterns in parental leave take-up of mothers and fathers in Austria, providing a detailed characterization of parents who are most likely to take shorter and extended leave spells. Moreover, we can quantify the consequences of leave-taking for future labor market outcomes for individuals themselves and their partners.

  To learn about the importance of additional leave incentives for fathers, we examine the effects of a recent change in paternity leave policy. In March 2017, Austria introduced a one-month parental leave scheme tailored to fathers right after childbirth, colloquially referred to as ‘daddy month’. We evaluate the overall take-up of this new scheme and analyze its impact on employment and earnings of parents.

  In the second part of the project, we assess how financial and career considerations affect parental leave choices of fathers. Financial incentives differ markedly between low- and high-earning parents, and we use income data provided by the AMDC to estimate how these incentives affect take-up rates. Linking fathers to workplaces further enables us to analyze if competition effects among coworkers deter fathers from taking leave.

  The third part of our project investigates the role of social norms. The AMDC includes detailed data on several person characteristics that we employ to proxy attitudes towards family and gender issues. This allows us to examine to what extent the effectiveness of parental leave policies depends on the social norms and attitudes of families.
• Heterogeneous risk preferences, entrepreneurship, and wealth inequality

  Funding agency: OeNB Jubiläumsfonds

  Project number: 18885

  Project amount: € 163.,00000

  Project duration: 01.10.2023-30.06.2026

  Project team: Monika Gehrig-Merz 

  Short description:

  We study the role of heterogeneous risk preferences as determinants of entrepreneurial decisions and their implications for wealth inequality. We ask how individuals’ risk attitude affects their choice of becoming a risk-bearing entrepreneur as opposed to a wage worker with a stable income, and how this affects wealth accumulation via savings / investment and hiring decisions. We combine survey evidence on subjective risk attitudes with individual responses to hypothetical lottery questions and infer individual measures of risk aversion. Empirically, we investigate the importance of risk attitudes for individuals to transition to self-employment. We use these empirical insights in a quantitative life-cycle model.
• Projekt 1 + 2 (Bank of Canada)

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: 374011

  Project amount: € 17.000,00

  Project duration: 01.07.2023-30.09.2024

  Project team: Philipp Schmidt-Dengler (Lead), Angelika Welte (Project Employee)
• The Informational Content of Consumer Choice

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: I 6136-G

  Project amount: € 132 909,00

  Project duration: 01.03.2023-31.08.2027

  Project team: Christine Zulehner (Project Lead), Benjamin Boesch (Project Employee)
• Consumer Inertia and Switch Behavior

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: I 6135-G

  Project amount: EUR 195.909,00

  Project duration: 01.09.2023-31.08.2027

  Project team: Christine Zulehner (Lead)
• Understanding Social Mobility - an Experimental Approach

  Funding agency: ÖNB Jubiläumsfonds

  Project number: 18633

  Project amount: 01.12.2021-30.11.2025

  Project duration: 

  Project team: Jean-Robert Tyran (Project Lead); Axel Sonntag (Co-Lead), Ada Kovaliukaite (Project Employee)
• Empirics of retail pricing

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: TP6

  Project duration: 01.03.2021 - 28.02.2026

  Project team: Christine Zulehner (Lead)
• Collusive Pricing

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: FG 605-G

  Project amount: € 14.7818,47

  Project duration: 01.03.2021 - 28.02.2027

  Project team: Philipp Schmidt-Dengler (Lead), Moritz Schwarz (Project Employee)
• Limited information and commitment

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: TP4

  Project duration: 01.03.2021 - 28.02.2026

  Project team: Eeva Mauring (Lead)
• Pricing under Asymmetric Information

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: FG 603-G (TP3)

  Project duration: 01.03.2021 - 28.02.2027

  Project team: Maarten Janssen (Lead)

   

  Short description:

  This project introduces asymmetric information into two key research area in Industrial Organization: Vertical Contracting and Revenue Management. Both areas typically assume that all stakeholders are symmetrically informed about relevant characteristics. We show that interesting new phenomena arise when the information asymmetries that naturally exist in the market are taken into account. Related to vertical contracting we show that by selling through a retailer, a manufacturer may hide information about the quality of the product it sells and that consumers may actually be better off not knowing the quality they buy. Related to revenue management we show that when firms have private knowledge about their capacities, they compete more severely than when there is common knowledge about their capacities.
• Dynamic Pricing

  Funding agency: FWF

  Project number: FG 602-G

  Project duration: 01.03.2021 - 28.02.2027

  Project team Daniel Garcia (Lead), Charlotte Ruth Hedwig Nenzel (01.03.2024-30.06.2024
  Laura Sorger (01.10.2023-31.07.2024)
  Evgeny Zalyubovsky (01.10.2024-28.02.2026) 

  Short description:

  In the research project "Dynamic Pricing," Daniel Garcia and his collaborators investigate the implementation and performance of dynamic pricing schemes in real-world markets. In particular, in markets for time-specific services, such as transportation, accommodation, or events, prices change as the date on which the product should be delivered approaches. In this project, we combine theoretical and empirical approaches to better understand both the behavior of firms that engage in these practices and the implications for consumers.
  
  On the theoretical side, the article Garcia, Janssen, and Shopova (2024) provides one of the very few models of price discrimination in oligopoly, and we investigate the possibility that firms engage in signalling about their outstanding capacity with their prices. The idea is that firms that have substantial residual capacity will tend to be more aggressive in their pricing, which will also make their rivals more aggressive in the future.
  
  On the empirical side, the work of Garcia, Tolvanen, and Wagner (2024 and forthcoming) studies the implementation of dynamic pricing among hotels in Central Europe. It shows that dynamic pricing is limited by managerial attention and argues that technological improvements connected to machine learning and AI need to be accompained of organizational change in order to effectively improve market outcomes.
  
  
• Pricing in imperfectly competitive markets

  Funding agency: FWF 

  Project number: FG 6-G/ FG 601-G

  Amount: € 1339.041,91

  Project duration: 01.03.2021-28.02.2027

  Project team: Christine Zulehner (Project Lead), Daniel Garcia (Co-Lead), Maarten Janssen (Co-Lead), Eeva Mauring (Co-Lead), Philipp Schmidt-Dengler (Co-Lead) Christine Zulehner (Speaker, Co-Lead)

  
  Short description

  Economists have formally studied pricing in imperfectly competitive markets since the mid nineteenth century. By analyzing the potential inefficiencies of such markets this research has guided regulatory and competition policy. With more and more transactions being shifted to online markets, research in this area remains highly relevant. The behavior of firms in imperfectly competitive markets is also studied in the management literature, with a stronger focus on strategies available to firms to become more profitable. Applications include bookings for hotel rooms, pricing of online airline tickets, as well as pricing in vertical contracts between firms.

  This project brings together the economics and management literatures and studies pricing in imperfectly competitive markets both from an empirical and a theoretical perspective. Our analytical framework uses game-theoretic models to capture strategic behavior in imperfectly competitive markets. To carry out the empirical analysis, we resort to econometric methods. In doing so, we bring new tools to the study of classical questions. We also aim to tackle new issues related to online markets and algorithmic pricing. By interacting with competition authorities, the project also aims to deliver insights that are relevant for competition policy.

  The project covers five themes: dynamic pricing, pricing under information asymmetries, consumer search, collusion, and retail pricing.

  Dynamic pricing is particularly important in online markets (e.g., related to hospitality management, but also in electricity), where firms can easily and frequently change their prices. The project on information asymmetries is motivated by the fact that especially in global markets firms often lack relevant business information about their competitors or their suppliers. Search frictions constitute the predominant framework to reconcile persistent price dispersion in many markets in the presence of continuous advances in ICT, that have made information about prices widely available and easily accessible for market participants. The focus on collusive pricing is motivated the difficulty competition authorities face in detecting this illegal practice from competitive behavior, especially when firms' costs are unknown. The project on retail pricing develops and estimates empirical models for gasoline and telecommunication markets that allow to quantify the effects of different policies, like taxation or regulation. There is substantial overlap among the five themes and we strive to exploit these synergies.
• Central Bank Digital Currency: Design, Adoption and Macroeconomic Implications

  Funding agency: Austrian National Bank (OeNB) 

  Project number: 18693 

  Amount: Euro 249.000,00

  Project duration: 1.3.2022 - 30.6.2026

  Project team: Paul Pichler (Lead), Philipp Ulbing

  Short description:

  The proposed project seeks to facilitate improve the scientific assessment of the desirability of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) by developing a formal framework to better quantify its potential benefits and costs. It will focus on the systematic comparison of different potential designs of CBDC and the intensive versus extensive margin of adoption, i.e., who is likely to adopt CBDC and for what transactions will CBDC likely be used. The first part of the project will develop a payment instrument choice model of CBDC, the second part will incorporate CBDC into a macroeconomic model and study the effects of its introduction on financial and macroeconomic aggregates such as credit creation and output.  
• The Gravity of Mobility and International Trade

  Funding agency: ÖeNB Jubiläumsfonds

  Project number: 18706

  Project amount: 211.000,00

  Project duration: 01.07.2022-30.06.2026

  Project team: Alejandro Cunat (Project Lead), Ashim Dubey (Project Employee)

   

  Short description:

  This project pursues a number of ideas that revolve around the common them “mobility and international trade”. We explore different links between the mobility decisions of individuals (within and between countries) and international trade. From a methodological perspective, the research project is based on quantitative exercises (both regression and counterfactual simulations) informed by micro-founded theoretical models. One cornerstone of our analysis is the gravity equation, which will help us build a bridge between theory and empirical analysis.
• Understanding Social Mobility – An experimental approach

  Funding agency: Austrian National Bank

  Project number: 18633

  Amount: Euro 247'000

  Project duration: Oct 2021 - Nov 2025

  Project team: Tyran, Jean-Robert (Project Lead); Sonntag, Axel (Co-Lead), Ada Kovaliukaite (Project employee since Sep 2022)

   

  Short description:

  Social mobility evokes the meritocratic ("American") dream of earning a better life through hard work, while lack of social mobility means that those at the bottom of the social ladder are doomed to remain there, no matter how hard they try. This project (i) experimentally investigates the relevance of the following structural determinants of social mobility: the degree to which success is driven by luck rather than effort, discrimination, wage compression, and the degree of social stratification. We then (ii) explore how different policy interventions such as income or inheritance taxes affect social mobility under varying structural conditions. We (iii) also investigate peoples' acceptance of alternative policy measures by the means of voting. We develop an economic model with competition for status and accumulation effects which result from status-dependent access to production technologies. This model serves to generate benchmark predictions that we put to a test in the economic laboratory.