DIW sucks. Seriously.
German Market
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diw might involve a lot of policy-oriented work. not sure this is true for the postdoc positions, and after all there are a few people at diw that manage to produce decent publications. however, if you have your mind set on an academic career this probably shouldn't be your first choice.
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The German academic market is about to close up for the foreseeable future. The generation changeover is almost complete. If you don't have a job now or in the next few years you will be pretty much stuck abroad forever. There is a fixed number of positions available, which have almost all been given to young guys. If anything this fixed number is about to decline with student numbers going down. Turnover in German Economics academia is about to plummet.
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ESMT is surprisingly unbalanced between finance and management / marketing: 1 finance prof vs. 18 (?) management / marketing profs??? They hired the finance guy 3 years ago but hiring marketing people constantly. I've got a call but I am thinking long and hard...views???
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The German academic market is about to close up for the foreseeable future. The generation changeover is almost complete. If you don't have a job now or in the next few years you will be pretty much stuck abroad forever. There is a fixed number of positions available, which have almost all been given to young guys. If anything this fixed number is about to decline with student numbers going down. Turnover in German Economics academia is about to plummet.
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In addition, there are a lot of decent APs now. Just have a look at Mannheim econ, they have dozens of APs (Juniorprofessoren + Habilitanden + Postdocs). Competition will be fierce in the next years and many of the nicer departments (Frankfurt, Mannheim) have filled their positions with young guns. So five years from now, good people may have to accept positions in rural areas or even in the east.
My recommendation is: work on topics that are also interesting for business departments (applied micro, finance), most business APs are leightweights, should be a lot easier to get a position as a business admin prof.
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Correct, but you can maintain the flexibility to join an econ department even when working on the mentioned topics. And despite all the nepistism in business departments, there are people who became professor although they have an econ background and have not been connected to business people (Roman Inderst, just to cite one very prominent example, but there are many more). Also, most German universities have integrated business/econ departments.
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In addition, there are a lot of decent APs now. Just have a look at Mannheim econ, they have dozens of APs (Juniorprofessoren + Habilitanden + Postdocs). Competition will be fierce in the next years and many of the nicer departments (Frankfurt, Mannheim) have filled their positions with young guns. So five years from now, good people may have to accept positions in rural areas or even in the east.
My recommendation is: work on topics that are also interesting for business departments (applied micro, finance), most business APs are leightweights, should be a lot easier to get a position as a business admin prof.
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It's probably worse. Business departments (with very few exceptions) are even less research-oriented than most Econ departments in Germany. Also, in many rural places there is no international orientation, having a PhD from the US or even another European country is a minus there and not a plus. There the old chronyism is probably still alive and having published 20 articles in some obscure German Zeitschrift will help you more than one Top 5. The recent so-called crisis that many old-style German economists blame the US-style for has not helped, either. No, there will be many good Germans stranded abroad for life.