Profiles of Leading Women Scientists on AcademiaNet – an initiative of the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
Search among the members of the Leopoldina for experts in specific fields or research topics.
Year of election: | 2015 |
Section: | Economics and Empirical Social Sciences |
City: | Vienna |
Country: | Austria |
Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz is distinguished for many important contributions in population economics. Her research is at the interface of mathematics, economics and demography and here in particular on the topic of population ageing and its economic consequences.
A main premise in her work on the economics of ageing is the fact that one needs to consider the interaction between ageing at the individual level (i.e. a longer life) and the population level (i.e. a higher share of older people) and how these processes are embedded in and also themselves shape the socio-economic environment and institutional set up. Her work in this area is particularly innovative by applying age structured optimal control theory to merge life cycle models with aggregate economic dynamics.
Further research topics are within the area of the interaction of environment, population and economy and agent based models of social interaction to explain fertility behavior.