MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship

During your stay, you will be supervised by professor Štefan Lyócsa, one of our leading experts in financial risk modelling. His current research is concerned with instabilities of the financial system, modeling of the financial cycle, managing risky positions on equity, commodity, and electricity markets. He is specifically interested in the role of the attention and sentiment has on behavior of asset prices, but also other economic and macro-economic variables. Moreover, Štefan is interested in data-driven topics related to the modelling of extreme price fluctuations, e. g. Value at Risk, Expected Shortfall. He is research-oriented and has co-authored over seventy peer-reviewed studies. However, he also works as an independent researcher for businesses and government institutions and enjoys teaching data analysis methods, which he has been doing for the past twenty years, including preparing and leading courses. Some ideas for potential topics:

• Shocks (climate related, geopolitical, market,...) in energy prices (especially electricity) and their transmission to the economy and households.
• Interconnectedness of monetary policy, house prices, equity and commodity markets.
• Machine-learning models to forecast tail-risk.
• Firm-level performance: governance, risk-taking, leverage, innovation.

During your stay, you will be supervised by Miloš Fišar, his research lies at the intersection of behavioral, experimental, and public economics, with a particular focus on bounded rationality, social preferences, (anti-)social behavior, and - in general - economic decision-making. You will work with the Masaryk University Experimental Economics Laboratory (MUEEL). Preferred topics include (but are not limited to) belief formation and updating, cooperation and norm enforcement, dishonesty and moral costs, risk and ambiguity attitudes, intertemporal choice, behavioral public policy (nudges), and behavioral responses to market design or regulation. 

Preferred topics include migration, labour market discrimination or discrimination in access to public services. During your stay, you will be supervised by Štěpán Mikula, one of our researchers in the field of economics of migration who also conducts research on hiring discrimination and discrimination in access to public services.

During your stay, you will be supervised by Jan Čapek, one of our leading experts in macroeconomic modelling and forecasting. His research sits at the intersection of structural macro models (especially DSGE frameworks), real-time empirical work, and policy evaluation, with a particular emphasis on how macroeconomic relationships behave under instability, data revisions, and model uncertainty. 

A central theme of his work is improving the reliability of forecasts for key variables such as GDP growth, inflation, unemployment, and interest rates, including through model comparison and forecast combination across DSGE and empirical approaches. A second major strand of his research focuses on fiscal policy and macroeconomic outcomes—measuring fiscal multipliers, understanding why they vary across countries and time, and assessing how results depend on identification choices, data vintages, and econometric specification. 

His recent work includes published contributions on the predictive performance of DSGE-based forecasts (and combinations thereof) for the euro area (published in the International Journal of Forecasting), the role of real-time data and revisions for the forecasting performance of DSGE models (published in the Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics), and empirical studies estimating fiscal multipliers—highlighting how sensitive multiplier estimates can be to model choice and specification, including applications to small open European economies (published in Oxford journals).

For candidates interested in quantitative macroeconomics, Jan’s work offers a natural home for projects in macroeconomic forecasting (structural and empirical approaches, forecast evaluation, and forecast combination) and macro policy analysis, especially around fiscal policy and multiplier estimation under uncertainty. At the same time, he welcomes a broad range of topics in applied macro—so if you have an idea related to macro forecasting or policy evaluation that you’d like to develop further, he’ll be glad to discuss it.

During your stay, you will be supervised by Zdeněk Tomeš, one of our leading experts in the field of transport economics and policy. Professor Tomeš has specialized in the areas of rail competition, modal shift, transport demand, and transport equity. He has published in journals such as Transport Policy, Research in Transportation Economics, and Journal of Transport Geography. He leads a research team at the Department of Economics. The team has many ongoing projects in cooperation with partners from the industry (Czech Railways) and intensive cooperation with foreign universities (Leeds, Milano, Florence). Contact: (tomes@econ.muni.cz)

During your stay, you will be supervised by David Špaček, one of our leading experts in public administration. In his research, David focuses on public administration and public management, especially on topics like digitalization, (e-)participation, e-procurement, strategic planning and management, quality management, intermunicipal cooperation and civil services. Currently he is involved in research projects focusing on changes in public authorities implemented due to the COVID-19 pandemic and systemic issues of public administration revealed by current crises. He has been actively involved in related working groups of recognized international conferences and, also, in close touch with practitioners from public administration. He also teaches related topics in courses delivered by the Faculty of Economics and Administration and is tutoring PhD candidates too.

During your stay, you will be supervised by Prateek Kalia, one of our leading experts in the field of consumer behaviour. His research concentrates on the intersection of consumer behavior and technology with relevance to marketing management. Especially he is interested in electronic commerce with a particular focus on digital retail, electronic service quality, cyberpsychology, human-computer interactions, and smartphone use. He is very well known for his novel smartphone user classification metrics called Cellulographics© and currently working on its integration into the above-mentioned topics. Methodologically, he has published quite extensively using second-generation statistical techniques such as structural equational modeling. His research appears in journals such as the International Journal of Operations & Production Management, Computers in Human Behavior, Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, and European Management Journal.

During your stay will be supervised by associate professor Dušan Mladenović, who is heavily focused on research related to consumer behaviour. His current research streams are focused on Word of Mouth, information retrieval, virtual worlds and environments, and technology adoption (GAI & Metaverse). Especially his interests lie in the intersection between tourism-hospitality, consumer behaviour and technology adoption. Methodologically, Dr. Mladenović relies on experimental research designs. Dr. Mladenović published in well-known outlets like: Computer in Human Behaviour, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality, Telematics and Informatics, Electronic Commerce Researche etc. Dr. Mladenović can be reached at: dusan.mladenovic@econ.muni.cz.

Some ideas for the potential topics:

• Synthetic Personas
• Agentic AI and Consumer Behaviour
• Virtual Influencers and Consumers’ Decision Making

During your stay you will be supervised by Tomáš Plíhal. This fellowship focuses on extracting predictive information from option and futures markets. Under the supervision of Tomáš Plíhal, the research develops econometric models that use derivative-implied measures—such as implied volatility, variance risk premia, and option-based sentiment indicators—to forecast market risk and price dynamics. The primary application area is equity derivatives, with opportunities to extend methods to energy and electricity markets depending on candidate interests. The work is computationally intensive, involving large-scale derivative databases and data APIs; candidates should have a strong quantitative background and proficiency in Python.

This MSCA fellowship, under the supervision of Tomáš Výrost,  develops econometric frameworks for forecasting tail-risk measures as core tools for risk management under extreme market conditions. The research targets settings with heavy tails, volatility clustering, and structural breaks, where standard forecasting approaches often fail precisely when accuracy matters most. The project contributes to the literature by systematically comparing and advancing tail-risk forecasting approaches, including GARCH-family and stochastic volatility specifications, quantile- and expectile-based models, score-driven (GAS) dynamics, semiparametric methods, and extreme-value techniques; improving ES estimation and validation, emphasizing robust estimation, joint VaR–ES modelling, and backtesting strategies that remain reliable in small samples and crisis regimes; extending models to multi-asset and systemic contexts, capturing time-varying dependence, spillovers, and tail co-movement relevant for portfolio and systemic-risk assessment; and demonstrating practical value through application-driven evaluation, stress testing, and portfolio allocation rather than purely statistical metrics. The expected outcome is a set of validated, reproducible modelling tools that strengthen tail-risk monitoring and decision-making across asset classes.