Semester Awards 2024

On Tag der Lehre (Day of Excellence in Teaching), UZH recognizes outstanding semester papers and academic achievements. The award-winning papers mark important milestones on the individual student journeys that were the primary focus of the event. In the spring semester 2024, five theses by students from the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics were awarded the semester award.

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How do parents influence their children’s career choices in Switzerland? In his Bachelor’s thesis, Federico Crivelli used survey data from secondary school students and found that 10-15 percent of children choose the same job as one of their parents, while almost half stay in the same field or type of occupation. The thesis also shows that kids are more likely to choose a job if their parents work in that area, and those who switch careers tend to move further away from their parents in terms of estimated earnings. Gender- specific patterns are also observed: Sons and daughters often follow the careers of their same-sex parent.

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It is well-known that human choice contains a significant random component. In her Master ’s thesis, Chen Lan explored how people make decisions by imagining they have different versions of themselves, each with its own preferences. These versions “vote” to decide what choice to make. Two models are introduced: One that assumes people act rationally and another that recognizes that they sometimes make irrational choices due to inattention. The findings reveal that inner conflicts and lack of attention significantly affect how people decide.

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What role do firm wage policies play in closing the earnings gap between immigrants and natives? In his Master’s thesis, Dominik Lukač examined this question by analyzing wage trends in Switzerland from 2002 to 2020. He highlights the significance of both within-firm and between-firm wage effects. For immigrants who arrived between 2000 and 2004, moving to higher-paying firms was key to reducing the gap, while wage inequality within firms persisted. Greater job mobility and larger wage hikes upon move enable this channel, while its size depends heavily on origin, education and age at arrival.

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How can athletes make the most out of the data from their wearable devices? In his Bachelor’s thesis, Paul Safari examined how athletes often fail to fully utilize wearable tech data to enhance their training. Collaborating with rowing experts, he identified major issues like interfaces that don’t encourage reflection and the absence of subjective recovery data. To tackle this, he developed „RecRef“, a mobile tool that combines user input and recovery metrics to help athletes optimise their recovery and performance.

Thesis not public

In her Bachelor’s thesis, Lina Widmer investigated the role of well-being in managerial contexts and its influence on job performance through the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory. The findings highlight that well-being is often characterized as an emotional state encompassing both pleasure and purpose, aff ecting physical, mental and financial health. To better understand employee well-being, the paper proposes that the definition of well-being must be extended with more specific aspects such as subjective satisfaction, good health, high engagement and the absence of stress or burnout.

• Read the Bachelor's thesis (PDF, 1 MB)