Georg Fischer

Georg Fischer
Senior Research Associate

email: fischer@wiiw.ac.at
telephone: (+43-1) 533 66 10

Georg Fischer is Senior Research Associate at wiiw, focusing on employment and social policies at the European level. He retired from the European Commission in July 2017, where his last position was Director for Social Affairs in DG EMPL. In the Commission, he was responsible for the development of social policy initiatives related to the Pillar of Social Rights. Earlier in his Commission career, he contributed to the establishment of the European Employment Strategy, worked on the Green and White Papers on Pensions, on policies to facilitate labour market transitions and more recently on policies to address social convergence and divergence. Previously to his work with the European Commission he worked at the OECD and served in the Ministries of Finance and Labour in Austria and at the Economic Cooperation Foundation in Tel Aviv. He was a research fellow at the Social Science Center Berlin and at the Yale University Macmillan Center (EU Studies Fellow 2015/2016).

Austria, Vienna

List of Publications

External Publications wiiw Publications

External Publications

Articles in refereed journals
  • 'The US Unemployment Insurance Scheme: A Model for the EU?' (with Christiaan Luigjes and Frank Vandenbroucke), Intereconomics Review of European Economic Policy, Volume 54, Number 5, September/October 2019
Articles in books
  • 'Social policies and the ecological transformation', in: François Balate and Maria João Rodrigues (eds), Our European Future: Charting a Progressive Course in the World, Publishing Partnership (Verlag), London, 2021, pp 40-46
  • 'Introduction: An Overview of Issues and Trends' (with Robert Strauss), in: Georg Fischer and Robert Strauss (eds), Europe’s Income, Wealth, Consumption, and Inequality, Oxford University Press, New York, 2021, pp 1-39
  • 'Social Europe: The Pillar of Social Rights', in: Ewald Nowotny, Doris Ritzberger-Grünwald and Helene Schuberth (eds), Structural Reforms for Growth and Cohesion. Lessons and Challenges for CESEE Countries and a Modern Europe, Chapter 4, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 2018, pp. 32-45
  • 'Temporary layoff unemployment in Austria: empirical evidence from administrative data' (with Karl Pichelmann), Applied Economics, Volume 23, 1991 - Issue 9, Taylor & Francis Online, 28 July 2006, pp. 1447-1452
Articles in non-refereed journals
  • 'Income inequality in the EU: General trends and policy implications' (with Stefano Filauro), VOX CEPR, 17 April 2021
  • 'The European Commission’s SURE initiative and euro area unemployment re-insurance' (with László Andor, Roel Beetsma, Brian Burgoon, Theresa Kuhn, Chris Luigjes, Francesco Nicoli and Frank Vandenbroucke), VOX CEPR, 6 April 2021
Other working papers and discussion series
  • 'Unemployment in Europe and the United States under COVID-19: Better constrained in the corset of an insurance logic or at the whim of a liberal presidential system?' (with Günther Schmid), WZB Discussion Paper No. EME 2021-001, January 2021

wiiw Publications

wiiw Monthly Reports
  • 'Minimum wages back on the agenda in Europe', Monthly Report No. 4/2018, wiiw Monthly Report, No. 4, Vienna, April 2018, pp. 6-10
wiiw Policy Notes and Reports
  • 'The Covid Crisis: Occupational Impacts in EU Economies and Policy Suggestions' (with Michael Landesmann), wiiw Policy Note/Policy Report, No. 53, Vienna, November 2021
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