David Dorn

David Dorn is the UBS Foundation Professor of Globalization and Labor Markets at the University of Zurich and Director of the university-wide interdisciplinary research priority program “Equality of Opportunity.” He is also an Affiliated Professor at the UBS International Center of Economics in Society and holds research fellowships at CEPR (London), IZA (Bonn), and CESifo (Munich). Previously, he was a tenured Associate Professor at CEMFI (Madrid) and a visiting professor at Harvard, UC Berkeley, MIT, Boston University, and the University of Chicago.

Education

• Ph.D. in Economics, University of St. Gallen (Dissertation No. 3613, September 2009)

Research Interests

Professor Dorn’s work sits at the intersection of labor economics, international trade, economic geography, and macroeconomics. His research agenda focuses on understanding how globalization and technological change reshape labor markets, wage structures, and social inequality. He has produced seminal studies on the “China shock”—the labor-market impacts of rising Chinese import competition—and on the polarization of employment toward low-skill services and high-skill professions.

His recent work extends to measuring multidimensional skills using LinkedIn data, analyzing superstar firms and the falling labor share, and examining public attitudes toward trade policy and their electoral consequences in the United States and Europe.

Publications & Data Impact

Dorn’s publications have appeared in top-tier journals such as the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of the European Economic Association, and Economic Journal. His datasets—covering occupation codes, task content, industry trade exposure, commuting-zone definitions, and political geography—are widely used across the economics profession.

Awards & Honors

• Hermann Heinrich Gossen Prize, 2023 (top economist under 45 in German-speaking countries)
• Swiss National Science Foundation ERC Starting Grant
• Ranked among the 100 most-cited economists worldwide over the past decade

Grants & Advising

As Director of the URPP “Equality of Opportunity,” he leads an interdisciplinary team investigating the determinants and consequences of unequal life chances. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Review of Economic Studies and the Journal of the European Economic Association, shaping the direction of research in labor and international economics.

Laboratory & Team

His research group is embedded in the Department of Economics at the University of Zurich, housed at Schönberggasse 1, Zurich. Administrative support is provided by Anne Sander (anne.sander@econ.uzh.ch).