Nicolas Ziebarth is head of ZEW’s Research Unit “Labour Markets and Social Insurance” and a professor of economics at the University of Mannheim. Before joining ZEW in July 2022, he was a tenured associate professor at Cornell University.

Professor Ziebarth’s research studies the interaction of (social) insurance systems with labour markets and population health. In particular, he is an international expert on the economics of sick leave. His sick leave research has been featured by the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the WHO and the Economist, and cited as a reason for the Healthy Families Act, the initial FFCRA emergency sick leave provision as well as its extension.

Professor Ziebarth won several awards for his research. According to RePEc, he ranks among the top 0.2 per cent of young economists with less than 15 years of research activity. In 2021, the Handelsblatt ranked him 12th among all German-speaking economists under 40.

He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Population Economics.