Zentralinstitut John-F.-Kennedy-Institut - Sociology Department Project: "Insuring modern society: A historical-comparative sociology of private insurance, its evolution, origins and consequences": This project proposes a historical-comparative sociology of the private insurance sector in its life and non-life branches (property, transport, etc.) in 20 old OECD countries starting in the late 19th century and 15 emerging economies with shorter coverage (Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe). The insurance sector annually collects about 7% of world GDP as premium income, holds about half of total banking assets and becomes increasingly important in times of rising climate and catastrophe risks, but has strangely been neglected by either historians and economists of finance with their focus on banks and capital markets or political scientists with their strong focus on public insurances within the welfare states. Sociologists themselves have covered “risk sociology” very well, but largely ignored the insurance sector therein. This project aims at filling this gap by building a cross-country historical database of the main stock and flow variables of modern premium-based insurances in order to study their evolution across time and countries, to explain their growth and to investigate selected consequences in three working packages.

Job description:
The students will be expected to contribute in locating, collecting, harmonizing, and systematizing historical data from primary sources of various countries and cities using statistical software, as well as assist in making simpler descriptive analyses.

Desirable:
- Familiarity with working with quantitative data and ideally historical data sources
- Knowledge of descriptive statistics and statistical software (e. g. R, stata, Python)
- Interest in economic sociology and political economy
- English (C1) and knowledge (reading skills, B1) of more than one European language other than English is an advantage
- BA or MA students in North American Studies (with an interest in sociology), BA/MA students in sociology or related social sciences (esp. economics, history)