Bernhard Schmidpeter

Bernhard Schmidpeter is an Assistant Professor at Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien) and a Research Affiliate at the IZA - Institute of Labor Economics since March 2020. Previously, he worked as a Researcher at the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER), University of Essex. He earned his Ph.D. from Johannes Kepler University (JKU).

His research focuses on labor economics, family economics, and the economics of education, using applied microeconometric methods to investigate how changing labor market conditions affect individual and firm decisions. Schmidpeter's work spans several critical areas including parental bereavement effects on mortality, grandmothers' labor supply decisions, immigration enforcement impacts on families, and the relationship between automation and unemployment. His research consistently employs high-quality administrative data, particularly from Austria, to provide causal evidence on important economic questions.

Schmidpeter's publications appear in top economics journals including the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Population Economics, and European Economic Review. His work on suicide contagion in the workplace, parental bereavement effects, and the impact of immigration enforcement on children's human capital represents innovative applications of economic methods to important social issues.

His research has received significant media attention from major outlets including The Telegraph, Die Presse, Handelsblatt, ORF Science, Süddeutsche Zeitung, and the WSJ Economics Blog, demonstrating the policy relevance of his work. Schmidpeter frequently collaborates with prominent researchers including Wolfgang Frimmel, Martin Halla, Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, Lukas Laffers, and Esther Arenas-Arroyo.

Currently, Schmidpeter is working on projects examining the equilibrium effects of cross-firm pay transparency and the demand for green skills in the evolving labor market. His research contributes to understanding how economic policies and social phenomena affect individual behavior, family dynamics, and labor market outcomes across multiple dimensions.