I am professor of Economics, esp. Political Economy and Empirical Economics at Helmut-Schmidt-University Hamburg. Since March 2022 I am also scientific director of Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI).
I am an applied econometrician with a special interest in the following topics:
I was born on July 19, 1968 in Düsseldorf, I am married and have two children. After a few stops in between, my way led me to Germany's most beautiful city, Hamburg. However, my football heart stayed in the Ruhr area and is deep royal blue.
After graduating from high school at Theodor-Heuss-Gymnasium in Essen-Kettwig, I did my 15-month basic military service in Lübeck. I then studied Economic Sciences at Ruhr University Bochum. After a short work at the Seminar for Economic and Financial Policy at Ruhr University Bochum (Prof. Dr. Hans Besters), I received a doctoral scholarship from the Free State of Saxony and moved to Technical University of Dresden. There I became a research assistant at the Chair for Monetary Economics (Prof. Dr. Alexander Karmann). In the end of 1999 I completed my Ph.D. with a thesis on "Politico-Economic Theories of Inflation and Business Cycles" with the grade "summa cum laude".
After some additional years at Dresden University of Technology as postdoc I switched to the Dresden branch of the Ifo Institute as Managing Director early in 2004 and completed my habilitation at the Faculty of Economics at the Technical University of Dresden with a thesis on "Methods of Inflation Forecasting". In October 2006 I accepted a substitute professorship at the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, where I have been a Professor of Economics, especially Political and Empirical Economics, since July 2007. I have also been a research professor at the Ifo Institute since 2010.
I am a member of the Verein für Socialpolitik (Committee on Economic Systems and Institutional Economics, Economic Policy), the CESifo Research Network, the Monetary Research Center, the European Economic Association, the American Economic Association and the Royal Econometric Society. Since 2013 I am Editor in Chief of the Review of Economics.