12.12.20223 Questions for Prof. Katarina Zigova

As of 1 November 2022, Katarina Zigova is an assistant professor of Personnel Economics, with a Focus on Vocational Education and Lifelong Training at the Department of Business Administration. In a short interview, she answers what she wants to achieve in research and teaching.

What do you focus on in your research? 

My research focus lies in the fields of economics of education and science. Within these fields I was involved in research projects on adult skills and educational policies, on returns to education, and on individual research productivity or publication bias. However, I am a curious applied economist and in the past, I also worked on projects in environmental economics and in economics of art fields. Here at UZH I intend to deepen my economics of education research line studying aspects of adult skills and training. I also want to develop my own research agenda on vocational education in Eastern Europe.

What would you like to convey to your students?

When I was a student, I gained most from lectures where economic models were accompanied by a narrative on school of thoughts or real-life examples from firms, banks, or markets. I want to lead students along these paths too. I want them to understand the theoretical concept in the background, but know what it stands for in reality, and finally convey what are the empirical experiences gathered around this concept. Economics and business are practical sciences, there are new phenomena popping up as the world economies around us change. Students who later become analysts or managers must learn to align them as they appear.

What are you looking forward to the most?

I very much look forward to work within the team of the Leading House on Economics of Education, Firm Behavior and Training Policies, which has a special research focus on aspects of vocational education. I believe that this type of education is unfairly treated as an underdog type of professional formation. But several of the most developed countries, with a high-quality service and manufacturing sector, have a large share of vocationally educated population, notably Switzerland or Japan. We have to understand the role of vocational education in the economy better, and perhaps, if it truly matters, to market-value workers it professionally prepares.

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