A distinguished economist Klaus F. Zimmermann – Professor at Bonn University and UNU-MERIT, President of GLO and Co-director of POP at UNU-MERIT – had paid a week-long visit to IESR. From March 17th to March 24th, 2019, he had a chance to spend some valuable time with our faculty and thus intensify cooperation between the two sides even further. The week ended up with IESR–GLO Workshop on Belt and Road Labor Markets, co-organized both by IESR Dean Prof. Shuaizhang Feng and Prof. Klaus. F. Zimmermann.
Klaus F. Zimmermann at the workshop
Professor Shuaizhang Feng has recently become a new Editor of the Journal of Population Economics, hence, we were highly looking forward to hearing more about the Journal from its Editor-in-Chief Klaus F. Zimmermann himself. On March 22, right after the workshop, the economist spared some of his time to join us for the interview. Professor introduced the historical background of the Journal of Population Economics, revealed his aspirations for its future development, and identified some of the key transformations seen over the years in the field of population economics (and economics in general), as well as in the most important focus of research published in the Journal since it was created in 1987.
The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Professor, could you briefly introduce the Journal of Population Economics and its history?
Journal of Populations Economics, which is already 32 years old, was founded because of the pressing need at that time to define the area of population economics. Up until then, population was irrelevant for the economics. There were, of course, early economists like Malthus [Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) – a famous English economist and demographer] thinking about population as part of economics, but this idea got lost over the course of economic history. It was only in the 1960s when people like Gary Backer and Jacob Mincer created modern labor economics (James Heckman, who was right here in this very room [says pointing to the room of our interview] is the next great person behind them). More than that, both of these economists had also developed the interest for population topics within the discipline, e.g. economics of family which, as a verified research area like it is today, did not exist then.
So, both of them, and particularly Gary Backer, were shaping the field which is now the basis of modern population economics. Nonetheless, the traditional journals weren’t publishing these topics. For instance, demographers who were also economists, had to publish in demography journals and so on, which was exactly the reason why we felt it is important to create the Journal. Up until now, it’s kind of unique. The only big competitor is the Journal of Human Resources (it was already published at that time) but still, it’s a little bit more of a labor journal than we are. Hence, nowadays, the Journal of Populations Economics is considered to be the leader of the international field of population economics.
What are your aspirations for the future of this Journal? What is its vision?
Well, we certainly want to remain the top field journal. We want to get into the rankings of journals and move further up. The rankings are typically based on a so-called impact factor, which refers to how many citations do the articles get by others. It’s not so much about getting good quality papers but rather getting more cited around the world – and that is a great challenge. At this point, we would definitely like to be in much higher appreciation [2017 Impact Factor: 1.296 (5-year IF: 1.95); Rank 69 of 2,096 journals listed in RePEc (June 2018)].
How has the Journal’s field of research – population economics, advanced over the years since the Journal was created?
These days, as the whole field of economics, we put less value to theories, mathematical models, and papers who are entirely written just with equations or formulas. This has to do with James Heckman and people like him. Micro-econometrics has taken over the discipline, and economics in general. The way people like him think was of great significance to the expansion of the Journal in a way that you need to have real-world questions which can only be explained with micro-data – one that is collected in big surveys and requires complex methods to analyze it. It has given a huge push to many applied topics such as fertility, marriage behavior, inter-marriage between ethnic groups, migration, etc., and thus stimulated the explosion of empirical literature because of the methods and dataset that have finally become available.
In the meantime, labor economists, like population economists, were the leading group within economics who did the applications because these topics originally came from these fields. I can give you an example. James Heckman has pushed for, what is called, program evaluation (i.e. evaluation of policy programs) which has helped to determine whether or not a particular government program is successful. For instance, let’s take education program that is designed to provide unemployed people with further education and training so they could later find a job. For that, you need two groups: one group that gets the program, and the control group that is the same as previous one, but doesn’t get it. Then, you can see which one of those groups is doing better. So, this is what James Heckman was advocating and why he got the Nobel prize (others, before him, had also similar ideas – he is not alone, but he has done so much for the discipline, so he definitely deserves the prize).
Of course, all of this was done in labor economics, but population economics is also doing similar kind of work. Likewise, it is done in other parts of economics as well. Nowadays, there is a new revolution – this is behavior economics, experimental economics – not many people do that, but it is also empirical. When I did my Ph.D., most of my competitors on the job market for professorships where people who were strong in theory and mathematical economics. Not by surprise, my first professorship had the title “Professor for Economic Theory”. I wasn’t into theories but I was a Professor for Economic Theory [laughing]. So, this clearly explains the change.
Could you identify the most important focus of today’s research that is published in the Journal of Population Economics? Also, how do you think, what will be the topics of focus over the next several years, and perhaps, in the later future? What is the plan?
Actually, there is no particular plan. Of course, we want to get the best papers we can get in population economics, and we certainly want to focus around attractive topics that drive the field. We – don’t drive the field. Being able to determine what people are researching would be a too ambitious goal for an academic journal. Instead, we try, so to speak, to absorb the most relevant areas. There was a time when migration wasn’t relevant but nowadays it’s a huge part of what we are doing. Or, for a long time, we were just doing fertility and marriage, mortality, and now, we are doing risky behavior which encompasses such behavior as taking drugs, having unprotected sex, etc. – these are the topics which weren’t dealt with so much in the past. The well-being – it’s another topic that wasn’t so relevant when the Journal was created. However, we had something else at that time. For instance, we had the demographics of the aging population, the pension system. These were theoretical topics.
Now, we have more problems like how to measure people’s well-being (which can be done only by analyzing data well, like James Heckman has shown us). But then, there was the time when we would say “oh, how can we measure well-being? This is subjective!”. Economists wanted to be objective, so they would say “this is soft data, we don’t even touch it!”. At that time, you could only see what people are doing – hard facts were relevant, not what people were saying! But now, we came around – we make surveys and we can finally ask people “how do you feel today?”. And this has to do with what we call utility economics, utility well-being, some even say that this is a measurement of utility function. Nowadays, we have huge datasets measuring well-being – maybe 200 countries can get this kind of data, which is analyzed and lots of papers are published.
Speaking about the future, certainly, some of the topics don’t die – issues like climate change and human adjustment, mortality. These days, the debate on climate change that is seen in academics is mostly about who is responsible, how did it happen, and so forth. Clearly, it has to do with societies’ infrastructure, etc., so, human beings are not at the center of this debate. Therefore, I think, the human side of climate-change (e.g. development process, adaptation, health issues) will play a much higher role in the future. Robots – that is another topic. Perhaps, it will be replacing migration, or perhaps, it will provide some new perspectives for the old-age care. Besides, if social robots become available in addition to the work robots that we already have, it can also have a huge effect on families. For example, having robots instead of dogs… [laughing]. I am not joking. It’s only partly a joke.
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After learning about the Journal of Population Economics, we were very eager to hear Klaus F. Zimmermann’s opinion about IESR and find out more about IESR–GLO cooperation. Both institutions have been collaborating since 2017 when IESR joined Global Labor Organization, and it was already the second time the economist was visiting our institute.
Could you share with us some of your impressions of IESR, the faculty, and the research it has been doing? We are curious to know!
From the very beginning, we had great trust in the leader of this institution – Professor Feng, who was already a prominent economist back then [when Klaus F. Zimmermann met Shuaizhang Feng]. Secondly, I knew that we have possibilities to build up something significant. When I was here last year, it was clear that he and the people here were making a huge progress, which was not that easy. In China, there were already many other centers in Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, just to name a few, where lots of good people were already doing great things [around the time when IESR was founded, in December 2015]. It’s not an easy job to do but Professor Feng has obviously done it. The university has given him this place, flexibility and enough financial resources to do a great job – you can see it from the quality of people hired, the way they interact with you and the quality of their work.
Last year, when I came here, I saw a lot of good people going very fast in the right direction. And besides, it’s not by chance that a guy like James Heckman is cooperating with IESR. It’s because he thinks that what has happened here is remarkable, and he is happy to support this – that’s the same for me. I have full respect for what has been achieved here in such a short period, only 3 years. I haven’t seen this in other countries.
Could you identify potential areas of future cooperation with IESR?
There are some long-term plans that have to do with our field of labor economics. We want to contribute to the high-quality academics, jointly publish in the finest journals, and also strengthen research on the countries in this region – not only China but also Southeast Asia, etc. This is exactly why we had this workshop [IESR–GLO Workshop on Belt and Road Labor Markets]. We hope that there will be a strong, long-term connection not only with the U.S. (e.g. University of Chicago), or Europe (e.g. Bonn University) but also here, within the region itself. We want to work on the topics that we already discussed before, like demography and migration (originally, this region has a lot of migrants, for instance, internal migration in China). So, these are the big topics for the future, and that is something we look forward to.
Are there any other anticipated IESR–GLO joint academic events in the future?
Yes, this is also the reason why I am visiting IESR. I don’t want to speak for Professor Feng, but we already agreed that we should intensify the collaboration as both sides have lots of advantages from it. Now, we have a strong Chinese partner [referring to IESR] which is also visible in other parts of the world. For instance, we both regularly go to the U.S. where the big winter meeting is [ASSA Annual Meeting] – 13 thousand scientists come to this meeting every year. We just had a joint reception there. So, we are collaborating in many ways, even outside of China (not only in the U.S.). We are also thinking about workshops together in other parts of world, like Europe.
Klaus F. Zimmermann and Shuaizhang Feng
