CESifo Network

The first conference of the newly established CESifo Area on Macro with Micro Data to be held on 12-13 June 2026. The purpose of this conference is to facilitate discussion on research dealing with any topic in macro between researchers from both sides of the Atlantic. 

While at CESifo, Elizabeth Cascio hopes to advance two projects – the first concerning the intergenerational effects of immigrant legal status and the second exploring the causes and consequences of massive school infrastructure investments in the postwar United States. These projects build on her past research, which has looked to policy initiatives of the past – the spread of state subsidies for early education, the introduction of large-scale federal funding for K-12 education, the federal restoration of black voting rights – to shed light on the structural challenges to building the human capital stock of the future.

Monika Piazzesi’s work specializes in macro-finance, including monetary policy, fixed-income markets, housing markets, and banking. One of her recent papers studies how households invest in green financial assets.

She is Area Director for the CESifo Research Network Area Macro with Micro Data, a Fellow of the CESifo Network, a research associate at the NBER. 

The inaugural Area Conference on Macro with Micro Data takes place on 25 and 26 July 2026.

While at CESifo, Kristian Behrens will present and continue his work on a recent project that documents and tries to understand the drivers in the changes in the distribution of jobs in all major urban areas in the US between 1990 and 2020 (“The evolution of the residential-employment mix within U.S. cities”, joint with Julien Martin, Florian Mayneris, and Farid Toubal).

Kristian’s research mainly focuses on urban economics (spatial sorting, agglomeration economies), regional economics (spatial distribution of economic activity, changes in the spatial structure of cities and regions), international trade (impacts of trade integration, trade frictions, transport costs), and theoretical developments in monopolistic competition.

The CESifo Working Paper Series offers a wide range of economic research across diverse topics. Here are the papers that recently garnered the most attention, based on download figures.

Can artificial intelligence (AI) revive the long-declining productivity of European firms and boost the continent's economic growth? How well are EU economies positioned to leverage AI while mitigating risks such as job displacement and algorithmic collusion? The answers largely depend on the business ecosystem, the speed of adoption, and – ultimately – balanced regulation and policy: Upskilling workers, strengthening digital infrastructure, and deepening the EU single market are some of the priorities discussed in this Forum.