Felix S.F. Schaff

I am a Sustainable Cooperation (SCOOP) Research Fellow and member of the Economic and Social History Group at Utrecht University. I received my PhD in Economic History from the London School of Economics. My research examines policy-relevant questions at the intersection of economics, history, and political economy. In particular, I study the long-run evolution and determinants of wealth and gender inequality in Europe, combining newly collected archival evidence with modern microeconometric and national accounting approaches. My work contributes to current debates in economics on inequality, development, and institutional change.

My latest paper, "The Unequal Spirit of the Protestant Reformation: Particularism and Wealth Distribution in Early Modern Germany", recently came out in the Journal of Economic Growth (vol. 30, 3, 2025), and my paper "Poverty in Germany from the Black Death until the Beginning of Industrialization" (with Guido Alfani and Victoria Gierok) in Explorations Economic History (vol. 95, 1, 2025).