Dr Robert Mahlstedt has been an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Copenhagen since 2019. In addition, he has been Visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA) in Bonn since 2021. In 2017, he received his doctorate at Potsdam University. He specialises in the evaluation of public policies through experimental and micro-econometric methods. His research spans labour and behavioural economics with publications in leading field journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Public Economics. He has contributed to various policy evaluation projects, including field experiments on the effectiveness of digital tools for supporting jobseekers and studies on the impact of minimum wages on employment and wage structures. Dr. Mahlstedt is currently working with us on an analysis of the labour market effects of language courses.

Dr Nico Pestel has been Associate Professor at Maastricht University at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) since 2021. Previously, from 2013 to 2021, he was Senior Research Associate and head of the research team “Policy Challenges” at the Institute for the Study of Labour (IZA) in Bonn and coordinator of the IZA network programme “Environment, Health and Labour Markets”. In 2013, he received his doctorate from the University of Cologne. His research interests lie in applied labour and environmental economics, with a particular interest in the role of environmental conditions in relation to education and labour markets. He also has several years of experience in the evaluation of labour and environmental policy measures; among his clients are the Minimum Wage Commission, the Federal Environment Agency and various federal ministries. He is currently working with us on a project for the Minimum Wage Commission evaluating the effect of minimum wages on employment and unemployment.