Patrick Emmenegger

Great news. The paper “Meeting the Twin Challenge in Times of Labor Shortage: How Modern Societies Promote Future Skills for the Digital and Green Transitions” (together with Martin B. Carstensen, Niccolo Durazzi, and Jane Gingrich) has just been accepted for publication in Regulation & Governance. It is the introduction to our upcoming special issue. Below is the abstract of the paper:

The twin transition to a digital and green economy has placed skill formation at the center of efforts to sustain competitiveness. Reforming skill formation systems poses enduring dilemmas on how to balance concerns about economic efficiency with social inclusion while securing employer commitment. The context of significant uncertainty brought on by the twin transition – placed at all levels, from individuals to firms to the state – amplifies the challenge of building effective skills ecosystems. We argue that the central question is no longer about whether governments should intervene but instead about how to govern skill formation under profound uncertainty. The task is to design institutions that are flexible enough to adapt to shifting technological and ecological demands while stable enough to sustain political coalitions and social inclusion. We argue that effective skills ecosystems for the twin transition must combine political stability with the capacity to embrace – rather than reduce – economic uncertainty.

Over the last months, several members of the CPE@HSG team have successfully defended their dissertations. Major congratulations to Linda Wanklin (December 2024), Andreina Thoma (April 2025), Cecilia Ivardi (June 2025), and Scherwin Bajka (September 2025) for these huge achievements. Andreina is now a postdoc at the University of Luxembourg, whereas Scherwin will start as a postdoc at the Swiss Federal University of Vocational Education and Training in January. Cecilia and Linda will continue as postdocs at the University of St.Gallen (and as part of GOVPET).

For several years, Alina has been a key part of the GOVPET research team at the University of St.Gallen and of CPE@HSG. Now it is time for a new chapter. In September 2025, Alina Felder-Stindt started her new position as assistant professor at the University Pompeu Fabra. Major congratulations to this fantastic achievement. On behalf of the entire research group, we wish her nothing but the best.

Excellent news. The Journal of European Social Policy just accepted our paper entitled “Yesterday’s Model for Tomorrow’s Economy? Dual VET and Wage Inequality in the Knowledge Economy” (co-authored with Matthias Haslberger). Here is the abstract:

Dual vocational education and training (VET) is said to have positive economic effects. However, recent contributions suggest that the rise of the knowledge economy may undermine these positive effects because university-educated workers are better suited for the new knowledge-intensive jobs. This paper provides the first evidence on the relationship between dual VET and wage inequality in mature knowledge economies. Using a new dataset on 37 advanced economies from 1996 to 2020, we find that dual VET is associated with lower levels of wage inequality. This negative association is particularly strong in the lower half of the wage distribution, which suggests that academically weaker students are the main beneficiaries of dual VET. Using three different indicators of the knowledge economy, we find, contrary to the fears often espoused in the literature, no clear evidence that the knowledge economy erodes this negative association between dual VET and wage inequality.

Glad to write that another paper has been accepted by Regulation and Governance for publication. The paper entitled “Re-skilling in the age of skill shortage: Adult education rather than active labour market policy” (co-authored with Giuliano Bonoli and Alina Felder-Stindt) is also part of the special issue on meeting the twin challenge in times of labor shortage. Here is the abstract:

European economies face the task of providing the necessary skills for the ‘twin transition’ in a period of skill shortage. As a result, we may expect countries to reorient their labour market policy towards re-skilling. We look for evidence of a reorientation in two relevant policy fields: active labour market policy (ALMP) and adult education (AE). We explore general trends in both fields based on quantitative indicators and compare recent policy developments in four countries with strong ALMP and AE sectors: Denmark, France, Germany and Sweden. We do not observe clear evidence of a general movement away from activation and toward re-skilling in ALMP. However, in AE, we identify several re-skilling initiatives that address skill shortages. Relying on insights from queuing theories of hiring and training, we argue that due to changes in the population targeted by ALMP, the locus of re-skilling policy is increasingly moving towards AE.

Great news from Regulation & Governance. The paper entitled “Problems and Solutions in the Knowledge Economy: Ideational Power in Slow-Burning Crises” and co-authored with Martin B. Carstensen and Cecilia Ivardi has been accepted for publication. Here is the abstract:

Societies are grappling with uncertainty about how to adapt to the emerging knowledge economy. Drawing on the public policy literature, we propose a new approach to studying the politics of ideas during long-term structural changes. We depart from existing scholarship that focuses on the politics of ideas during episodic crises, and instead focus on ideas that develop gradually in the context of ‘slow-burning’ crises, using the example of the knowledge economy. In slow-burning crises, the processes of defining problems and identifying solutions unfold over different timeframes and lead to variation in coalition building because they involve a diverse set of actors promoting ideas at different levels of abstraction. Our cross-national quantitative analysis of national public debates shows that employers act as key problem brokers, proposing problem diagnoses that focus on efficiency challenges. In contrast, the actors proposing solutions are more diverse, promoting ideas centered on inclusion and governance.

Wonderful news. The paper “High Skills for High Tech:  Higher Education as Industrial Policy” (together with Niccolo Durazzi and Alina Felder-Stindt) has been accepted for publication in Governance. It will be part of a special issue on new industrial policy (edited by Donato Di Carlo, Kathleen McNamara, and Manuela Moschella). Here is the abstract:

How do states create the skills needed for high technology economic activities that hold an increasingly important role in contemporary societies? Examining economic statecraft in the higher education sector, this article shows that the policies employed by governments to expand the supply of high skills vary depending on their economies’ most advanced sectors. Governments who seek to meet the demand of the high-end services sectors pursue a strategy of ‘open-ended’ higher education expansion. ‘Targeted’ expansion of higher education, instead, is the preferred option for governments in countries characterized by large advanced manufacturing sectors. The latter strategy, however, is hampered by the presence of a partly private higher education system since the ability of governments to successfully pursue their strategies is mediated by the existing institutional framework in the realm of higher education policy. Empirically, the argument finds strong support through three country case studies – Germany, South Korea, and the United Kingdom – that allow to simultaneously leverage a most-similar and most-different research design.

A great way to start the week. The Socio-Economic Review just accepted our paper entitled “Skill Requirements versus Workplace Characteristics: Exploring the Drivers of Occupational Gender Segregation” (together Scherwin M. Bajka, Benita Combet, and Sabine Seufert).

Here is the abstract: What role do skill requirements play in gendered occupational preferences? Previous research has emphasized workplace characteristics such as salaries and family-friendly work hours. Less attention has been paid to skill requirements, even though they are an important part of job descriptions and serve as reference points for individuals’ assessment of their suitability for occupations. Using a choice experiment among Swiss adolescents who are in the process of choosing their vocational training occupation, this paper demonstrates that women and men have surprisingly similar preferences for workplace characteristics. In contrast, skill requirements are better predictors of gender differences in occupational preferences. We find that technical skills are critical in explaining gendered occupational preferences, with occupations that rely more heavily on new technologies attracting fewer women. At the same time, both genders prefer occupations that emphasize social interactions, suggesting that the prominent ‘people’ versus ‘things’ distinction does not adequately capture gendered occupational preferences.

In parallel, the Zeitschrift für Berufs- und Wirtschaftspädagogik has accepted a paper from the same project entitled “Zukunft der Arbeit: Geschlechtervergleich in der Berufsorientierung im Zeitalter der Künstlichen Intelligenz” (together with Sabine Seufert, Mandana York, and Scherwin M. Bajka). This paper focuses on the potential of AI in reducing the occupational gender segregation.

And now the summary of our article “Who Counts? Non-Citizen Residents, Spatial Sorting, and Malapportionment” (with André Walter), forthcoming in the British Journal of Political Science, has appeared on DeFacto, entitled: “Wer zählt? Wie Wahlsysteme und Immigration politische Repräsentation prägen.” Here is the link to the German and the English version.