Lukas Lehner is currently a visiting researcher and a Austrian Marshall Plan Scholar in his 4th year of his Ph.D. at the University of Oxford. Lehner first studied economics at the Vienna University of Economics for his undergraduate degree. He chose to study economics because he attended high school during and in the wake of the global financial crisis and recession and became deeply interested in the subject. Having also an interest in political science, he sought out a politics, philosophy, and economics program, but because such a program did not exist in Austria, he chose to study political economy at the London School of Economics, developing a more comprehensive view of his interest areas. Upon finishing his masters degree at LSE, he worked for the International Labor Organization and the economics department of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in Paris. After this three-year break from academia, Lehner went to Oxford University for his Ph.D. He is currently in his 4th year and is a visiting researcher at IES this fall, and will be going to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a visiting researcher for the Spring semester this upcoming year.
Lehner’s current research is centered around Labor Market Policy. This research interest had developed for a long time, going back to when he was in his masters at LSE, in which he specialized in labor relations. This interest is also a driving reason behind why he worked for the International labor organization. In addition, Lehner is also interested in wage growth and in forecasting economic projections. His current Ph.D. research is centered around investigating why wage growth has been so slow pre-Covid-19 despite low unemployment rates and policies to support the unemployed to get back into jobs again in the form of a guaranteed employment project. He has already helped pilot a job guarantee scheme in Austria, of which the results of the study were released just last week.
A major reason Lehber chose Berkeley is that he had a strong interest in working with Emmanuel Saez (also his sponsor), who is researching economic inequality and labor market & unemployment. Professor Saez has a vibrant group of economists and researchers at Berkeley, so the exchanges with other researchers are helpful for Lukas’s personal research. Lukas hopes during his time at Berkeley to get innovative ideas from top-notch researchers. He also wants to compare research and practices in leading American universities versus leading European universities. In addition, he hopes that he can meet many inspiring people and possible professional collaborators. Lehner has loved Berkeley in the short time that he has been here. Having been here since the end of September, he had already presented his work in three different seminars, and apart from being affiliated with the IES, also shares ties with the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. He enjoys the vibrant academic community and is thankful for getting good feedback from the faculty, as well as meeting other aspiring researchers in his field, whom he believes he can collaborate with in the future.