On the invitation of Professor Shuaizhang Feng, Dean of the Institute for Economic and Social Research (IESR), the President of the Global Labor Organization (GLO), Professor Klaus F. Zimmermann (UNU-MERIT, Maastricht), visits Jinan University from March 11 to March 20.

On March 12, Prof. Zimmermann gave a “career talk” for young scholars of IESR and started his discussions with various individuals. He spoke about his own career background, the challenge of publishing in academic journals, the involvements in academic networks and the media responsibilities of scientists. Zimmermann has been Program Director of CEPR, Founding Director of IZA and President of DIW Berlin. He has created the IZA Journals and was involved in various other journals, e.g. he was one of the Managing Editors of Economic Policy. He still is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Population Economics and directs GLO as its President.

Together with Professor Feng, Professor Zimmermann has organized a joint IESR – GLO Labor Workshop that takes place at Jinan University on March 13, 2018. Some young faculty members of IESR and several other GLO Fellows were present at the event, including M Niaz Asadullah (University of Malaya), who is also the Southeast Asia Lead of the GLO research program. Prof. Zimmermann provided the opening paper presentation on  Arsenic Contamination of Drinking Water and Wellbeing  on the workshop.

On March 15, Professor Zimmermann delivered a public lecture on The European Migration Challenges and Perspectives , which is open for all faculty and students from the university.

Prof. Zimmermann and Prof. Feng had a dialogue for more than two hours discussing labor market of China and Europe. They talked about the similar unemployment problems in China and Europe, exploring underlying causes of Europe's high long term unemployment and China's high long term unemployment rate, the consequences and policies to address these issues.

(News edited from http://www.klausfzimmermann.de/)