Felix Schulz

Profile

Profile

During and after studying Economics and Business Economics at the undergraduate levels in Utrecht, Felix gained valuable insights on regulatory matters while working at the strategy and sales division in the German automotive industry at BMW and Tesla Motors. Regulatory difficulties particularly in regard to environmental matters to reduce carbon emissions from the transport sector motivated him to pursue a M.Sc. in Economics of Public Policy, again at the Utrecht School of Economics.

After working on projects relating to the labour market outcomes of temporary workers, systems competition in higher education and the proposals on how to phase out coal until 2050 for policy-makers of the Dutch Ministry for Economic affairs, he wrote his dissertation on the effect of employment protection legislation on the share of managers across countries touching on notions of empoyer-employee distrust and management control. Before continuing on the topic of trust and managent control in his PhD research at the Work and Employment Relations Division at the Leeds University Business School, Felix worked as a group tutor for undergraduate Economics students in Utrecht and as a research assistant for a political communication consultant firm in Berlin.

In light of this, Felix' research interests span from his PhD on pay inequality and trust to wider social, political, economic and environmental topics, with a particular interest for the distributive justice instrument of 'limitarianism'. He currently holds a full 3-Year Scholarship from the Work and Employment Relations Division. 

Prizes/awards

Best proposal at a student competition at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs on "How to phase out coal until 2050"

Summary

My research project intends to investigate the role of intra-firm pay differentials in the development of trust employees have in their employers and managers. Put differently, in times of high and further growing pay inequality, how does pay dispersion affect the trust we have in our supervisors and employers? To answer this questions, my work draws on a multidimensional concept of trust as a psychological state affected by values, feelings, attitudes and emotions and combines this with social psychological theories most prominently equity and social comparison theory. 

Keywords

Inequality, trust, employment relations, social psychology, social comparisons, equity theory, emotions, work behaviour, distributive justice

Teaching

Labour Economics 

HRM Research Methods and Practice

Economic Institutions (Industry)

Research interests

I am interested in the effect of income inequality on interpersonal trust and on how income and wealth inequality affects status-driven consumption. As such my research interests are situated  at the intersection of economic, social and environmental aspects. Particularly, the potential role for a cap on income and the notion of 'limitarianism' as a distributive justice principle are fields I see as having to play a role in a socio-ecological restructuring of our current economic system. 

Qualifications

• M.Sc. Economics of Public Policy at Utrecht University
• B.Sc. Economics and Business Economics at Utrecht University