Faculty and Board of Management

Prof. Dr. Christoph M. Schmidt
Director of the RGS Econ and Member of the Board of Management

Since 2002 Prof. Dr. Christoph M. Schmidt is head of the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung (RWI Essen) and professor at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. He received his Ph.D. from Princeton University (MA 1989, Ph.D. 1991) and completed his habilitation in 1995 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) of Munich. From 1995 to 2002 Schmidt was a full professor for Econometrics at the Universität Heidelberg. During his education he was awarded a Princeton University Fellowship (1987-1990), an Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (1990-1991) and a habilitation fellowship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) DFG (1992-1995). Since 1992 he has been a Research Affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), London, since 1996 a CEPR Research Fellow, and since 1998 he is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn.

He served as an editor of the Journal of Population Economics and has published articles in journals such as the Review of Economics and Statistics and the Journal of Public Economics.

Research interests: applied econometrics, in particular labor and population economics

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Leininger
Director of the RGS Econ and Member of the Board of Management

Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Leininger holds a full professorship in Economics at the Universität Dortmund since 1989. Prior to this he received his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) at the London School of Economics, London. In 1988 he completed his habilitation in economics at the Universität Bonn, followed by a Heisenberg Scholarship of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) DFG. Prof. Leininger is speaker of the economic faculty of the DFG as well as co-editor of the Journal of Evolutionary Economics. Stays as a visiting scholar led him to the University of Maryland, Boston University and Murray Hill (USA), to Stockholm and elsewhere. He was a former member of several program committees of annual meetings of the European Economic Association (EEA), of the Econometric Society and of the Verein für Socialpolitik (German Economic Association).

Research interests: economic theory, in particular microeconomic theory, game theory, auction theory, public choice, industrial organization

Prof. Dr. Erwin Amann
Member of the Board of Management

Prof. Dr. Erwin Amann holds a chair for Microeconomics at the Universität Duisburg-Essen. He received his doctoral degree in natural science at the University of Vienna and completed his habilitation at the Faculty of Economics and Social Science at the Universität Dortmund. He teaches microeconomics, game theory and information economics.

Research interests: game theory, auction theory, evolutionary game theory

Prof. Dr. Thomas K. Bauer
Member of the Board of Management

Prof. Dr. Thomas K. Bauer holds the chair in Empirical Economics at Ruhr-Universität Bochum since 2003. He studied economics at the Universität München where he received his degree as Diplom-Volkswirt in 1993. From 1993-1997 he worked as research associate at SELAPO, Universität München. In July 1997 he obtained his doctoral degree from the Universität München for his dissertation on the labor market effects of immigration and migration policy in Germany. From 1997-1998 Thomas Bauer visited Rutgers University, USA, under the auspices of a Feodor Lynen Fellowship of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. In September 1998 he joined the Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (Institute for the Study of Labor) IZA in Bonn as Senior Research Associate and became IZA Program Director for the Research Area "Mobility and Flexibility of Labor" in July 1999. Since February 2004 he is member of the executive board of RWI Essen. Further he is research fellow of the IZA, research affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London and the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies (CCIS) at the University of California, San Diego, USA.

Research interests: migration, population economics, applied microeconometrics

Prof. Dr. Ansgar Belke

Ansgar Belke is Full Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Duisburg-Essen since April 2007. Until March 2007, he held Full Professorships for International Economics at the Universities of Stuttgart-Hohenheim and Vienna and Assistant Professor at the University of Bochum. In 1995 he received his PhD and finished his habilitation in 2000 at the Ruhr University of Bochum (supported by the German Research Foundation) with a double venia legendi for Economics and Econometrics. Prof. Belke is member of the ECB Observer group, the Euro Area Business Cycle Network, the Scientific Advisory Council of the IAW (Tübingen), of the Committees for Economic Policy and International Economics within the German Economic Association and of the Council of the "Arbeitskreis Europäische Integration" (AEI). Since 2004, he is also a Research Fellow of IZA (Bonn). He serves as a co-editor of Empirica and as an Associate Editor of E-conomics (Kiel Institute of the World Economy) and has published widely in refereed international journals and in a number of international newspapers on a regular basis.

Research interests: international macroeconomics, monetary economics and European integration

Prof. Dr. Jeannette Brosig-Koch

Prof. Dr. Jeannette Brosig holds a full professorship for Quantitative Economic Policy at the Universität Duisburg-Essen. She obtained her doctoral degree in March 2003 and received her Habilitation in January 2008 at the Otto-von-Guericke-Universität Magdeburg. During this period she also stayed at Penn State University as a research fellow (2004) and served as the managing director of the Magdeburg Laboratory for Experimental Economics (2005-2008). From 2006 to 2008 she taught at the Universität zu Köln ("Lehrstuhlvertretung"). Prof. Brosig is the director of the new Laboratory for Experimental Economics at the University of Duisburg-Essen.

Research interests: market design, experimental economics, game theory

Prof. Dr. Matthias Busse

Matthias Busse is Professor of International Economics at the Ruhr-Universität of Bochum. Before joining the Ruhr-Universität, he acted as an interim professor of economics at the University of Trier in 2008/2009. From 2000 to 2008 he worked as a senior economist and head of the Programme World Economy at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWA and HWWI). Professor Busse is Research Fellow at the HWWI and Director at the Institute of Development Research and Development Policy at the Ruhr-Universität. He received his Ph.D. degree and his habilitation degree in economics, both at the University of Hamburg.

Research interests: international trade, foreign direct investment, and development economics

Prof. Dr. Volker Clausen

Prof. Dr. Volker Clausen is a full Professor for International Economics at the Universität Duisburg-Essen, campus Essen, since 2001. After his master studies in economics at the London School of Economics and Political Science he did a doctorate and habilitated at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität Kiel. Prior to joining the faculty in Essen he taught at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn as well as the Kelley School of Business in Bloomington, Indiana (USA). Recurrent stays for research at American universities like MIT and recently at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, DC, have improved his academic profile.

Research interests: macroeconomics, European economic and monetary union, international financial markets, general equilibrium models, quantitative economic research

Prof. Dr. Stefan Felder

Prof. Dr. Stefan Felder holds the new Chair of Health Economics at the Economics Department of the Duisburg-Essen University, campus Essen. He studied economics and sociology, received his Ph.D. and his venia docendi from the University of Bern. He worked and taught at the University of Western Ontario (1990/92), University of Zurich (1992/1996) and University of Fribourg (1993/95) before joining the Faculties of Medicine and Economics at the University of Magdeburg in 1997. He currently is the general secretary of the German Association of Health Economics.

Research interests: health insurance, reimbursement of health care providers, competition in and regulation of health care markets

Prof. Dr. Manuel Frondel

Manuel Frondel received a diploma in physics and economic engineering and is currently chief of the research division “Environment and Resources” at RWI. Since 2009, he is also Professor for Energy Economics and Applied Econometrics at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. From 2001 to 2003, he was a Research Fellow at the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, and part-time professor at the University of Applied Sciences, Heilbronn, Germany. He received his Ph. D. from the Department of Economics at Heidelberg University.

Research interests: applied econometrics in the fields of environmental, resource, and energy economics

Prof. Dr. John P. Haisken-DeNew

Univ.-Prof. Dr. John P. Haisken-DeNew is Professor of Economics and holder of the Chair "Economic Policy: Competition Theory and Policy" at the Ruhr University Bochum since March 2009. He is Adjunct Professor of the Department of Economics at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada since July 2008. He received his doctorate in economics at the University of Munich in 1995, with his dissertation on "Migration and Inter-Industry Wage Structure in Germany". He received his MA in Economics at the University of Toronto, Canada in 1988 and his BA Honours in Economics at Carelton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is also Co-Principal Investigator in the Special Research Unit SFB 475-B9 funded by the German Science Foundation "Counterfactual Analyses of Distributions of Labour Market Relevant Outcome Variables with a Special Focus on Individual Income". He is the author of the panel data package for Stata called "PanelWhiz".

Research interests: Applied labor economics, applied micro econometrics, wage structure, education, migration, welfare and income inequality and health economics

Prof. Dr. Walter Krämer

Prof. Dr. Walter Krämer is a full professor for Economic and Social Statistics at the Faculty of Statistics at the Universität Dortmund. He obtained a doctoral degree at the Johannes-Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, and received his habilitation at the Technische Universität Wien (Vienna). Prior to joining the Universität Dortmund he taught empirical economic research at the Universität Hannover. Prof. Krämer is chairman of the econometric committee at the Verein für Socialpolitik (German Economic Association). Besides this he is a member of the editorial board of Empirical Economics and of Austrian Journal of Statistics as well as an academic referee for statistics of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) DFG.

Research interests: econometrics, public finance, social policy

Prof. Dr. Kornelius Kraft

Prof. Dr. Kornelius Kraft holds a chair in Microeconomics at the Universität Dortmund since 2003. He received his doctoral degree and habilitated at the Universität-Gesamthochschule Kassel. Before joining the faculty in Dortmund he taught at the University Fribourg (CH) and at Universität Essen. Prof. Kraft is a Research Fellow at the Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung (Center for European Economic Research) ZEW, Mannheim, and Research Fellow at the Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (Institute for the Study of Labor) IZA in Bonn. In 2001 he was awarded a second prize in the GSOEP Award for the best publication on the basis of the socioeconomic panel (SOEP) 1998 to 2001.

Research interests: labor market economics, industrial organization, empirical economic research

Prof. Dr. Ludger Linnemann

Prof. Dr. Ludger Linnemann is Professor of Applied Economics at the University Dortmund. He received his doctoral degree in 2000 from the University of Cologne, where he also completed his habilitation in 2004. From 2005 to 2008 he held a Professorship in Economic Policy at the University of Bonn. His publications are focused on problems of applied macroeconomics, business cycle theory, and growth, in particular the empirical and theoretical foundations of fiscal and monetary policies.

Research interests: fiscal policy, monetary policy, economic fluctuations, growth, empirical macroeconomics

Prof. Dr. Wolfram F. Richter

Prof. Dr. Wolfram F. Richter is a full Professor for Economics (Public Finance) at the Universität Dortmund since 1981. He obtained his academic training at the universities Karlsruhe, Bielefeld and at the London School of Economics. Prof. Richter acted as scientific organizer of annual conferences for the International Institute of Public Finance and of the Verein für Socialpolitik (German Economic Association). Among other things he is co-editor of FinanzArchiv. Finally, he is a member of the advisory board of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Fellow of the European Economic Association and Research Fellow of the CESifo in Munich as well as the Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit (Institute for the Study of Labor) IZA in Bonn.

Research interests: public finance, in particular taxes and social security systems; regional, educational and environmental economics

Prof. Dr. Julio R. Robledo

Prof. Dr. Julio R. Robledo holds a chair in Applied Microeconomics at the Ruhr-University Bochum since 2011. He studied Economics and Mathematics at the Free University of Berlin, where he received his degree as Diplom-Volkswirt in 1994. In 2000 he obtained his doctoral degree from the Free University of Berlin for his dissertation on the private provision of public goods. From 2001-2002 he was a researcher at the DIW Berlin (German Institute for Economic Research) before joining the University of Vienna as assistant professor at the Department of Economics (2002-2007). He held a tenured lectureship at the School of Economics, University of Nottingham, from 2007-2011 before taking up the position in Bochum. He teaches public finance modules on market failure and taxation at bachelor level and applied microeconomic and IO oriented modules at master level.

Research interests: public goods, industrial organization, economics of innovation, network economics

Prof. Dr. Michael Roos
Member of Board of Management

Prof. Dr. Michael Roos will be a full professor in Macroeconomics at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum from 1 July 2009. He studied Economics at the Universität des Saarlandes, the Universidad de Sevilla, and the University of Michigan. After the Diplom, he joined the doctoral program (Graduiertenkolleg) "Resource Allocation, Economic Policy and Collective Decisions", the predecessor of the RGS Econ, and received his doctoral degree in 2002 from the Universität Dortmund. He completed his habilitation at the Universität Dortmund in 2008 and became a lecturer in the School of Economics at the University of East Anglia, UK.

Research interests: Behavioural macroeconomics, experimental economics, empirical macroeconomics, regional economics, New Economic Geography

Prof. Dr. Andreas Schabert
Member of Board of Management

Prof. Dr. Andreas Schabert holds a full Professorship for Macroeconomics at the University Dortmund since 2006. He obtained a doctoral degree in 1999 and received his habilitation in 2004 at the University of Cologne. During this period he also studied at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Vienna and stayed at the Columbia University in New York as a visiting scholar. From 2004 to 2006 he worked as a Postdoctoral Researcher and as an Assistant Professor in International Economics at the University of Amsterdam and Tinbergen Institute, where he currently acts as a Visiting Professor and Associate Research Fellow. His research on monetary policy led to stays at the Bank of Spain, the European Central Bank, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Research interests: Macroeconomics, International Macroeconomics, Monetary and Fiscal Policy

Prof. Dr. Reinhold Schnabel
Member of the Board of Management

Prof. Dr. Reinhold Schnabel holds a chair in Economics, in particular Public Economics, at the Universität Duisburg-Essen, campus Essen, since 2000. He obtained a doctorate at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main and received his habilitation at the Universität Mannheim. Stays abroad led him to Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley. In his publications he focuses especially on social security systems.

Research interests: labor supply, wage determination, social security and early retirement, social service and unemployment insurance, savings behavior and private retirement arrangements, microeconometrics

Prof. Dr. Jens Südekum

Prof. Dr. Jens Südekum holds a full Professorship for Microeconomics and International Trade at the Mercator School of Management (University of Duisburg-Essen). He studied economics at the Universities of Göttingen and the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). In 2003 he received his PhD from Göttingen. Afterwards he was offered a junior Professorship at the University of Konstanz, where he stayed until 2007. During that period he held a position as a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Mainz, before joining the University of Duisburg-Essen in October 2007. Jens Südekum is research fellow of IZA and the Institute of Employment Research (IAB) and visiting fellow of the Indiana University at Bloomington.

Research interests: International Trade, Economic Geography, Regional Labour Markets

Prof. Dr. Thorsten Upmann

Prof. Dr. Thorsten Upmann holds a Professorship for General Economics at the Mercator School of Management, University of Duisburg-Essen. He studied economics at the University of Bielefeld where he received a doctor's degree in economics (Dr. rer. pol.) in 1996 and where he completed his habilitation in 2002. Thereafter he was a Visiting Full Professor at the Interdisciplinary Institute for Environmental Economics, University of Heidelberg (from April 2002 to March 2003), before he obtained a Hochschuldozentur (equivalent to an Associate Professor w/o tenure) at the Institute of Mathematical Economics, University of Bielefeld; meanwhile, he was a Visiting Full Professor at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt a. M. (from October 2008 to March 2009). Then, in October 2009 he joined the University of Duisburg-Essen.
Thorsten Upmann is a member of the Verein für Socialpolitik, the International Institute of Public Finance (IIPF), the CESifo Network, and also a founding member of International Graduate School Economic Behavior and Interaction Models (EBIM) at the University of Bielefeld. His research interests are labour market participation decisions, labour market negotiations, theory of taxation (especially environmental taxation and environmental tax reforms), strategic fiscal and environmental policies in open economies, and interjurisdictional tax competition.

Research interests:  labour-market-participation and fertility decisions, labour market negotiations, credit negotiations and pricing of credit contracts, tax reforms, fiscal competition and strategic environmental and industrial policies in open economies.