Prof. Dr. Christina Felfe, Ph.D.

Enhancing Cooperation between Immigrant Youth and their Native Peers

Christina Felfe’s current empirical work includes a large scale field study at more than 50 schools in Germany, collecting data on around 5000 students. In this field study, she elicits comprehensive information on students’ background as well as a large array of developmental measures, such as students’ ambitions, attitudes, expectations, interests, social capital and social preferences, using both survey questions and behavioural economic experiments. Based on this data she, together with her co-authors, addresses the question of whether birthright citizenship helps to overcome in-group favouritism and thus to enhance cooperation between immigrant youth and their native peers.

Ms Felfe’s research interests lie in the area of labour economics, in particular in the area of education and migration. Her current research projects address the following questions: What are the determinants of and thus effective policies to promote the integration of children with migration background? How should the care and education system be designed to equally benefit children from all socio-economic backgrounds? What can explain the employment and wage gap between men and women and which political measures can help reduce these inequalities? In her research, she uses state of the art microeconometric methods applied to administrative data which she enriches – if possible – with surveys or behavioural economic experiments.

Christina Felfe is Assistant Professor at the Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research of the University of St. Gallen. Starting in Autumn 2018, she will head the Chair of Labour Economics at the University of Würzburg. She holds an MSc in Economics from Humboldt University and an MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Passau. She received her PhD in economics from University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona. She is also a CESifo Research Network Research Fellow. Her paper, “The Willingness to Pay for Job Amenities: Evidence from Mothers’ Return to Work”, won the Heinz König Young Scholar Award.