Felix Koenig

Felix Koenig is an Assistant Professor of Economics at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College of Information Systems and Public Policy.

His research examines the drivers of economic inequality with a particular focus on the impact of technical change on the world of work. Dr. Koenig’s recent work studies the rise of winner-take-all labor markets, where a few superstar workers earn most of the incomes. In this work, he explores how modern technologies can contribute to the rise of such superstar markets.

Dr. Koenig also analyses flows in and out of employment. In this work, he particularly focuses on the job market prospects of workers hit by unemployment or disability spells and analyses the barriers these groups face in finding employment.

Dr. Koenig works with large scale administrative tax data, historic US population Census data and household surveys and uses modern empirical methods to study economic behaviour. In 2018 his work has been awarded the Royal Economics Society Junior Symposium’s “Best Paper Award” and in 2020 the European Association of Labour Economist “Young Labor Economist” award.

Dr. Koenig received a Ph.D. and MSc in Economics from the London School of Economics, and a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from the University of Oxford. Prior to entering academia, he worked for the German Bundesbank. Currently, he is a Research Affiliate at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) and the Center for Economic Performance (CEP).

Media Articles

• Business Insider - One map shows how much a $15 minimum wage would be worth in every state (01-30-2021)
• VoxEU/CEPR - Importing inequality: Immigration and the top 1% (09-21-2020)
• Financial Times - Migrants responsible for UK’s growth of top incomes and taxes (09-21-2020)
• Forbes - Nearly A Quarter Of U.K.’s Top One Percent Are Migrants, Study Finds (09-21-2020)
• The Guardian - About a quarter of the UK's top earners are migrants, data shows (09-20-2020)