Barbara Petrongolo appointed future Director of the Labour Economics Programme

Barbara Petrongolo will take over from Joseph Zweimuller as Director of the  Labour Economics Programme from 1 August 2015.

Barbara is Professor of Economics at Queen Mary University and Research Associate at the Centre for Economic Performance of the London School of Economics. She has also taught at the Paris School of Economics, the London School of Economics and the University of Carlos III, and studied at the Università di Pisa and LSE. Her main area of interest is applied labour economics. The focus of some of her recent contributions is the performance of labour markets with job search frictions, with applications to unemployment dynamics, welfare policy and interdependencies across local labour markets. She has also carried out research on the causes and characteristics of gender inequalities in wages and employment rates, both in a historical perspective and across countries, with emphasis on the role of employment selection mechanisms, structural transformation, and interactions within the household. She is department head until July 2015.

Josef has graciously agreed to extend his term for till July 2015 and will take the lead for CEPR in organising next year’s symposium.