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Thijs van Rens

University of Warwick, UK, and IZA, Germany

Writing for IZA World of Labor forced me to make my ideas easier to understand, without the technical luggage. This not only helped me to publicize my findings among a wider audience, but also provided a welcome challenge to focus on the big picture

IZA World of Labor role

Author

Current position

Associate Professor, University of Warwick, UK

Research interest

Unemployment, wages, inequality, economics of food and obesity

Website

https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/economics/staff/jmvanrens/

Positions/functions as a policy advisor

Academic Fellow, UK Parliament, 2017; Economist Visitor, DG Enterprise and Industry, European Commission, 2013; Consultant, Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), 2010–2011

Past positions

Junior Researcher and Adjunct Professor, Research Centre for International Economics (CREI), Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2005–2012

Qualifications

PhD Economics, Princeton University, 2005

Selected publications

  • "Accounting for mismatch unemployment." Journal of the European Economic Association (Forthcoming) (with B. Herz).

  • "Selective hiring and welfare analysis in labor market models." Labour Economics 57 (2019): 117-130 (with C. Merkl).

  • "Wage rigidity and job creation." Journal of Monetary Economics 60:8 (2013) (with C. Haefke and M. Sonntag).

  • "Skill-biased technological change and the business cycle." Review of Economics and Statistics 95:4 (2013): 1222–1237 (with A. Balleer).

  • "Heterogeneous life-cycle profiles, income risk and consumption inequality." Journal of Monetary Economics 56:1 (2009): 20–39 (with G. Primiceri).

article(s)

  • Rethinking the skills gap Updated

    Better understanding of skills mismatch is essential to finding effective policy options

    Roland RathelotThijs van RensSee-Yu Chan, November 2023
    Evidence suggests that productivity would be much higher and unemployment much lower if the supply of and demand for skills were better matched. As a result, skills mismatch between workers (supply) and jobs (demand) commands the ongoing attention of policymakers in many countries. Policies intended to address the persistence of skills mismatch focus on the supply side of the issue by emphasizing worker education and training. However, the role of the demand side, that is, employers’ rigid skill requirements, garners comparatively little policy attention.
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  • The labor market in the UK, 2000–2019 Updated

    Unemployment rose only modestly during the Great Recession and fell strongly since, with productivity and wages lagging behind

    Benedikt HerzThijs van Rens, February 2020
    Experiences during the Great Recession support the view that the UK labor market is relatively flexible. Unemployment rose less and recovered faster than in most other European economies. However, this success has been accompanied by a stagnation of productivity and wages; an open question is whether this represents a cyclical phenomenon or a structural problem. In addition, the effects of the planned exit of the UK from the EU (Brexit), which is quite possibly the greatest current threat to the stability of the UK labor market, are not yet visible in labor market statistics.
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