Overview
Philipp Kircher is the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations in the Department of Economics who works mostly on how firms and workers meet and stay together: How wages attract workers of different talent, how this affects the productivity of firms with different production technologies, and how technological change and automation affect this. Since the meeting process in the labor market is somewhat similar to the meeting process underlying the spread of diseases, he has also worked on the spread of infectious diseases, how individuals protect themselves, and how this affects policy efficacy. He has explored this in the context of HIV/AIDS and of Covid-19.
In his research he uses a mixture of theoretical modelling, computational simulations, and statistical methods. His work has been published in the major journals of economics such as the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Review of Economic Studies. He also acted as managing editor and chairman of the latter.