The Eui Has An Open Vacancy for A

**The EUI has an open vacancy for a**

**Research Assistant in the**

**Department of Economics**

**Florence, 13 September 2024**

**Reference: V/RA/ECO/3/2024**

***

**Who we are
**The **European University Institute** (EUI) at a glance:

- an **international organisation** set up in 1972;
- a research university focusing exclusively on **postgraduate**, **doctoral** and **post-doctoral studies**, and

advanced research;
- located in the hills overlooking the city of Florence, Italy.

The Institute also hosts the Historical Archives of the European Union.

The EUI’s **Department of Economics **(ECO) brings together scholars from all over Europe in a stimulating
and innovative research environment.
ECO focuses on a wide range of topics in the fields of microeconomics, macroeconomics and econometrics.
ECO runs one of Europe’s leading Ph.D. programmes, a MRes in Economics and brings together scholars
from all over Europe in a stimulating, innovative and outstanding research environment.

**Employment details**

**Contract type **Part-time 50% (15/30, 20 hours/week)

**Length of contract **12 months. Start date 1 November 2024

Academic contracts at the EUI may be further renewed (several times and
conditional to the availability of funds), leading to an extension of the period of
service up to a total of 5 years, including the first contract period.

**Salary indication and **Grade: ASTAC3 step 1
**grade**

The basic net monthly salary after taxes is approximately 1.880 Euro, plus
allowances if applicable.

More information about conditions of employment is available here.***

**Place of work **Florence, Italy

**About the project**

**Project Director **Prof. Alexander Ludwig

**Project details **The research project “Aggregate Effects of the Egg-Freezing Technology and

Policy Implications” is a German Science Foundation (DFG)-funded project, which
runs until 31 October 2026. Family businesses are unique drivers of economic
dynamics. In a first step, we want to work out the precise contribution of family
firms to aggregate output. In a second step, we want to analyse how taxation of
business wealth and housing wealth affect the economy taking into account family
business formation. Finally, we aim to analyse how access to technologies of tax
non-compliance such as creating partnerships or forming S-corporations (in the
US) affect family businesses and whether those are more likely to accordingly not
conform to taxation.

**Job description **The Research Assistant will provide research assistance to the Director of the
project.

Main tasks include:

- Carrying out independent literature reviews;_ _
- Indepentend academic writing of first drafts of research papers;_ _
- Setting up a “simple” portfolio choice model of tax non compliance taking

into account the differences between tax evasion and tax avoidance;_ _
- Extending the simple model to a multi-period life-cycle model;_ _
- Extending the simple model to explicit model of family business and

inheritance of (housing) wealth;_ _
- Anaylising business and housing wealth taxation with particular emphasis

on family businesses;_ _
- Studying implications for aggregate tax revenue and welfare effects of

taxation._ _

**Qualifications and experience**

**Qualifications and Essential**:
**Experience**
- Master of arts or Master of science in Economics;
- Advanced programming skills in Matlab, Python, R and Stata acquired
through previous experience;
- Proven excellent knowledge of the economics literature on tax evasion and

avoidance;
- At least 2 years of demonstrated experience with micro-econometric data

analysis and methods for causal identification;
- Proven experience in developing and solving dynamic life-cycle models with

taxation, aggregate government budget constraints, tax evasion and
avoidance.
**Desirable**:

- Third year PhD student or higher, preferably in Economics.***

**Languages **Excellent knowledge of English, both spoken and written (CEFR level: C1 or
above). Knowledge of other languages constitutes an advantage.

**How to apply**

time)

**Data Protection**

required by its Data Protection Policy (President’s Decision No. 10/2019 of 18 February 2019 regarding Data

Protection at the EUI).

**Equal opportunities**

The European University Institute applies a policy of equal opportunities, which, in accordance with Article 1d of

its Staff Regulations, prohibits discrimination on any grounds such as sex, race, colour, ethnic or social origin,

genetic features, language, religion or belief, political or any other opinion, membership of a national minority,

be deemed also to constitute a reference to a person of the female sex.