Labour market expert Michael Siegenthaler receives SIAF Award 2017
Dr Michael Siegenthaler, from the KOF Swiss Economic Institute of ETH Zurich receives the 2017 SIAF Award. The labour market expert is being honoured for his outstanding dissertation on the subject of "The Swiss Labour Market".
In his dissertation, Siegenthaler addressed inter alia questions relating to Switzerland’s weak productivity growth, its remarkably high wage ratio as well as the impact of strong immigration, and the rise in the value of the Swiss franc on the Swiss labour market. In his work, Siegenthaler corrected firmly entrenched opinions on Swiss labour market productivity growth, which is often claimed to be too low, and was able to demonstrate that the immigration of recent years did not have a negative impact on the employment situation and wages of existing workers.
His dissertation “Examining the Special Case - Special Trends and Events at the Swiss Labour Market” was supervised by Jan-Egbert Sturm, Professor for Applied Macroeconomics at D-MTEC and Director of the KOF Swiss Economic Institute. Siegenthaler is currently focusing on the research topics of labour market economics, migration research and macroeconomics.
The SIAF Award
The prize, which is worth CHF 10,000, is awarded each year by the external pageSwiss Institute of International Studies of the University of Zurich in partnership with the company external pageErnst & Young. Each external pageSIAF Award honours an outstanding dissertation at the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich. The award recognises topics that are of relevance to the understanding of political, economic, social and cultural relations in a global world. This year’s prize-giving ceremony was held on 22. November 2017 in the Auditorium of the University of Zurich.