We welcome our new colleague Philipp Poyntner who joins us as a postdoctoral researcher after having received his PhD from the WU Vienna in 2023. His research focuses on macroeconomics, specifically unconventional monetary policy, the housing market and inequality. He applies empirical methods using predominantly microdata such as surveys, firm data, bond data and administrative data. Welcome Philipp!

Tobias Scheckel, PhD student at the PLUS Econ Department, had the opportunity to participate in an advanced PhD course given by David Dunson (Duke University) at the renowned Study Center Gerzensee (Switzerland) on Bayesian methods for stochastic network modelling.

In our field, publications are predominantly conference-based rather than journal-based. This summer one of our group members, Tijn de Vos, attended two such conferences to present their work. Tijn wrote a blog about their experiences where they reflect on the environmental impact of conference travel and how to do this as sustainable as possible. In particular, they write about how the trip this summer included 13 trains and over 5000 km of train tracks.