Postdoc position in “Economics“ (m/f/d)

The climate needs bright minds. The Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) addresses crucial scientific questions in the fields of global change, climate impacts and sustainable development. It is one of the world's leading research institutions in its field and offers natural and social scientists from around the world an inspiring environment for excellent interdisciplinary research.

The Climate Economics and Policy Department of PIK, located at EUREF Campus in Berlin-Schöneberg, is offering a

Postdoc position in “Economics“ (m/f/d)

(Position number: 16-2025 Postdoc Economics)

on mechanism design for global public good provision

The position is funded for 24 months. An extension is possible, conditional on available project funding. Remuneration is in accordance with the German public tariff scheme (TV-L Brandenburg), salary group E 13. The full-time position for the Postdoc has a weekly working time of 40 hours (100%). It can also be filled on a part-time basis.

The position will be based in the working group “Welfare and Policy Design”, headed by Prof. Dr. Matthias Kalkuhl at Research Department “Climate Economics and Policy”. 

The candidate will work in a growing team aiming to optimize and ex-ante evaluate different components of an architecture for improving global public good provision that is sketched here. The architecture consists of two components, tax clubs and reward funds. Reward funds would incentivise governments to achieve outcomes (low emissions, forest conservation, effective disease surveillance) with positive global externalities. Tax clubs would raise funding for the reward funds. Note that candidates are in no way expected to read this background material for the application. We provide the link here so that potential applicants can better assess whether they find the research agenda promising. In that spirit, here is a more detailed case for how the work could be useful.

Projects to contribute to (the candidate could contribute to any of these projects, depending on skills and interest):

• Reward fund design:

1. Build “incentive-preserving prediction models” for variables with positive global externalities, based on country characteristics (GDP, population density…)
2. Develop procedures, grounded in incentive theory (for predicting how countries would respond to incentives) and welfare economics (for normative evaluation), for determining how a reward fund should pay out its budget to countries, based on their outcome variables and the predicted values form 1)
3. Develop economic models for ex-ante evaluating the performance of the proposals based on 1) and 2) and for optimizing the proposals along different design options (reward payment paid out as loans or transfer to governments or as universal cash transfers to populations)

• Tax club design:

1. Applied optimal taxation theory analysis to assess potential tax bases and instruments in terms of their efficiency and incidence
2. Applied game-theoretic modelling based on 1) and on numerical estimates of the benefits that potential donor countries derive from different global public goods, thereby enabling ex ante evaluations of tax club proposals

In addition to contributing to ongoing research projects, the candidate will be encouraged to critically assess the different components of the research agenda in terms of their strategy for impact and to help shape our agenda by developing further research ideas.

Requirements:

• A doctoral degree (or expected completion within a few months), for example in economics, social science or related field
• Excellent mathematical and analytical skills from fields such as mechanism design and optimal taxation
• Familiarity or interest in game theory, tax competition and fiscal federalism, welfare economics, environmental economics, public economics is a plus
• Ideally Working knowledge of programming languages such as Mathematica or Python
• Machine learning methods (for the baseline prediction for the reward funds) is beneficial

We expect:

• Strong motivation to contribute to policy-relevant research
• Strong interest in teamwork and collaborative research

We offer:

• Flexi-time and mobile working up to 50 % of the working time
• Working in a dedicated and motivated team with supportive colleagues
• Attractive working space at the EUREF-Campus in Berlin-Schöneberg
• A collective pay scheme and associated benefits, as well as a subsidized travel card or Deutschland-Ticket Job.

PIK values equality and diversity. We encourage applications without photo. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment regardless of ethnic and social origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, care responsibilities, or age. PIK seeks to increase the share of women in scientific positions, and therefore explicitly encourages women to apply. In cases of equal qualification and within the given legal scope, women will be given preference. PIK also encourages applications by parents returning from parental leave.

Please apply by 29.06.2025 directly via our application form below this job advertisement on our website. Note that as long as the position has not been filled, this job ad will stay online and all applications will be considered, whenever they are submitted.

If you hold an international higher education qualification, please also submit a certificate evaluation from the Central Office for Foreign Education (ZAB) with your application. If you do not yet have a transcript evaluation, please note that you may have to request one if your application is successful. For further information, please visit the website: https://www.kmk.org/zab/central-office-for-foreign-education.html

For further information or to discuss the position, please contact Dr. Lennart Stern.

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