Niels Westergård-Nielsen

Presentation

Niels Westergård-Nielsen, MSc (Econ), Aarhus University, 1975, PhD (lic.polit), University of Copenhagen, 1982. Employed as associate professor at Aarhus School of Business Jan 1984,  Professor Sept. 1989 - May 2013. Visiting scholar at University of Wisconsin 1979-80, University of Chicago, 1983, NBER, Harvard University, 1997, Curtrin University, Perth, 1998, RSF-scholar, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2007-2008. Director of Center for Labour and Social Studies (Grundforskningscenter), Aarhus University, 1992-2000, Director Center for Corporate Performance, Aarhus School of  Business, 2001-2013. Consulting for the OECD, 1986, 1993-97 and for the World Bank 1994-97 (Zambia) and 2003 (Namibia).

Niels Westergård-Nielsen has been member of several Danish Government Commissions on the labour Market and on Greenland, Chaired the Commission on Apprentices, 1993. The most recent commission was the wage commission. He has authored various textbooks on the Danish Labour Market, authored scientific books and articles in leading journals on issues on skills and education, wages, health factors, HR, satisfaction, data issues and productivity. Has served as chairman of several research and evaluation committees: (evaluation of Uppsala University, Norwegian Research Council, EU-projects) and taken part in several large international research projects.

The research started in labour market studies using register data (and was among the first doing that). This led to cooperation with psychiatrists and publications in the medical literature. Niels then turned register research into research on what happens inside firms concerning personnel and firm performance. Keywords in this research: job turnover, job satisfaction, wage policies of firms, firm specific human capital, costs of job turnover, intergenerational mobility.

Primary research areas

• Firm level job creation and destruction and its courses
• Firm level performance and the employees
• The role of Entrepreneurship
• Work environment and the firm
• Sickness absenteeism