Philipp Grübener is an assistant professor of economics. He studies macroeconomics, labor economics, and public finance.
One strand of Grübener’s work focuses on understanding the determinants of earnings risk in the labor market, which type of private insurance margins are important, and how public policies can be efficiently used to insure workers against idiosyncratic risks. Recent work investigates the interaction of heterogeneous firms and heterogeneous workers in driving worker earnings dynamics and the joint labor supply decisions of couples. A second strand of his work concerns the optimal design of the tax-and-transfer system in light of rising inequality.
Before joining WashU, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Goethe University Frankfurt. He received a bachelor's in economics from the University of Münster, a master's in money and finance from Goethe University Frankfurt, and his PhD in economics from the European University Institute.