The Hong Kong Jockey Club Professorship in Economics

The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes The Wealth of Nations, published by the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith in 1776, as a foundational study in the history of economics and the first formulation of a comprehensive system of political economy.

The Wealth of Nations is also seen as one of the foundational papers on labour economics, predating its recognition as a formal discipline. Professor Uta Schönberg of The University of Hong Kong (HKU) said labour economics is about how labour markets function, and it explores how shocks, policies and institutions impact the labour market.

Professor Schӧnberg, a leading economist who specialises in labour economics and applied microeconomics, is The Hong Kong Jockey Club Professor in Economics and Chair of Economics at HKU Business School. She is also a scholar at the HKU Jockey Club Enterprise Sustainability Global Research Institute, which was established by HKU Business School and funded by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust to create a world-class hub for best practices in sustainability.

Her research topics include migration, wage dynamics and inequality, family economics, and the economics of gender. Her work focuses on understanding the challenges and opportunities faced by workers and firms in the context of migration, globalisation, and technological and demographic changes.

So far, much of her research has concentrated on Germany, a country with unique economic and educational institutions. However, Professor Schönberg is now expanding her research to labour markets in several Asian countries, specifically China, Japan, and South Korea. These markets are characterised by distinct institutions that remain relatively understudied. Through this work, she hopes to gain a deeper understanding of how different institutional contexts shape responses to global challenges, ultimately supporting informed decision-making.

Professor Schönberg’s research is characterised by its applied focus, policy relevance, and integration of rigorous theoretical analysis with comprehensive empirical investigation. Her work leverages large-scale administrative datasets, often covering entire populations and enabling linkage between workers and their respective firms.

She has extensively studied the impact of immigration on domestic labour markets. Using the sharp influx of Czech workers into the German-Czech border region following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 as a natural experiment, Professor Schönberg’s research demonstrates that native employment declined markedly in the affected areas. Importantly, incumbent workers who were already employed in the region prior to the immigration shock did not face an increased risk of job loss. Instead, the primary adjustment occurred through the reduced hiring of native workers, as firms increasingly hired Czech immigrants to fill vacancies. Younger workers tend to adapt to the influx of immigrants by investing more in education.

Professor Schӧnberg earned her MS from the University of Hanover in Germany in September 1998 and completed her PhD at University College London (UCL) in the UK in 2004. Her early academic career included a position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Rochester in the United States from 2003 to 2008. In 2008, she returned to UCL's Department of Economics, where she became a professor in 2014. She joined HKU Business School in the summer of 2023.

Professor Schönberg is a highly respected academic, as evidenced by her appointments as Co-Editor of the American Economic Review (2023-2026), Joint Managing Editor of the Review of Economic Studies (2016-2021), and Co-Editor of the Journal of Labor Economics (2011-2016). She is an elected Fellow of the British Academy, the Econometric Society, the Society of Labor Economics, and the European Association of Labor Economists.