Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiterin
am Institut für Sozioökonomie

Research Interests: measuring living standards, time and income poverty, the interlinkages of social and ecological sustainability, regression beyond the mean, distributional copula models

My research delves into the theoretical foundations and measurement of living standards, with a particular focus on time and income poverty and the interlinkages between inequality and environmental sustainability. I investigate the reciprocal causality of unpaid work and employment status driven by normative pressures for specialization. Building on the interconnected nature between time-use and labor market outcome I am engaged in developing methods to estimate absolute and relative time and income poverty. These approaches are then employed to examine various facets of poverty, all underpinned by the goal of discerning distributional patterns that elucidate the adverse impacts of multidimensional poverty.

To unpack these complex patterns, I specialize in employing regression beyond the mean. Utilizing distributional copula models enables the identification of vulnerabilities to poverty at the nexus of gender and ethnicity, and aids in assessing prospects for a future that is both socially and environmentally sustainable. Another research interest is the analysis of the care penalty, which helps explain the weak bargaining position of essential workers in general and care workers in particular. I am passionate about these research fields not only because they are barely studied, but also due to their profound significance in understanding the nuanced dimensions of gendered poverty and sustainability. 

I greatly enjoy developing and teaching courses on current economic challenges and statistics. At the University of Duisburg-Essen, I teach 'Measuring Living Standards' and 'Transforming Care', as well as 'Wissenschaftstheorie und Einführung in die Methoden der Sozioökonomie'. Previously, I was actively involved in establishing new courses on heterodox economics, such as devising the concept for the lecture series 'Heterodox Economics', which was awarded the 'Scientific Award of the State of Lower Saxony' in 2015. Additionally, I am well-versed in a wide spectrum of statistical methods, which I apply in tutoring a PhD-level introductory course and working as a statistical consultant at the Centre for Statistics in Göttingen, where I advise students of diverse abilities and backgrounds.

Dorn, F., Maxand, S., & Kneib, T. (2024). The nonlinear dependence of income inequality and carbon emissions: potentials for a sustainable future. Ecological Economics, 216, 108016.

Dorn, F., Radice, R., Marra, G., & Kneib, T. (2023). A bivariate relative poverty line for leisure time and income poverty: Detecting intersectional differences using distributional copulas. Review of Income and Wealth.

Dorn, F.; Folbre, N., Gautham, L., McDonald, M. (2023). Cheap Praise: Bonuses for Essential Workers in the Covid-19 Pandemic. In Duffy, M.; Armenia, A.; Price-Glynn, K., (editors). Confronting the Global Care Crisis during COVID19: Past Problems, New Issues, and Pathways to Change. Rutgers University Press.

Dorn, F. (2021): It’s Time: Poverty, Inequality and Sustainability beyond the Mean. Dissertation. Available at https://ediss.uni-goettingen.de/handle/11858/13915.

Berner, A.; Dorn, F.; Ochsner, C.; Silbersdorff, A.; Wolfinger, L. (2020). Plurale Lehre in den Wirtschaftswissenschaften an der Georg-August-Universität Göttingen. In Urban, J., Schröder, L.-M., Hantke, H., Bäuerle, L., (editors). Wirtschaft neu lehren. Erfahrungen aus der pluralen sozioökonomischen Hochschulbildung. Wiesbaden, Springer VS.

Brummbauer, T., Dorn, F., Jorck, G. von., Mewes, S. (2020). Zeitwohlstand für Pflegekräfte als Potenzial für eine nachhaltige Gesellschaft. Schwerpunktheft: Sozial-ökologische Infrastrukturen. Institut für ökologische Wirtschaftsforschung