Valentin Lang

I am an Assistant Professor of International Political Economy and Development at the University of Mannheim. Previously, I was at the universities of Zurich, Cambridge, Heidelberg, and Paris and worked for the IMF and the OECD.

In my research, I study the political, economic, and distributional implications of global governance and international (dis-)integration. My projects examine the political economy of international institutions, analyze the electoral backlash against globalization and migration, and study the causes and consequences of economic inequalities. My work often combines economics with political science and is based on advanced statistical methods for causal inference.

My research is published in journals like the American Journal of Political Science, the American Economic Journal, the Journal of Development Economics, and the Journal of Politics. In the press, it has appeared in The Economist, Le Monde, Süddeutsche, FAZ and Politico. I was also invited to present my research to institutions such as the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund and it provided the basis for a parliamentary question of the European Parliament.

News: 

• I was invited to the interviews for the ERC Starting Grants (February 2025).

• I won the 2025 PPE Young Scholars Award for Social and Institutional Change (January 2025).

• We published our work on inequality during the Eurocrisis as an ESM Working Paper (January 2025).

• The American Journal of Political Science (AJPS) published our paper on biased bureaucrats (November 2024).

• We presented our paper on international bureaucracies at a seminar at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) (October 2024)

• The Economist and L'Opinion discussed our paper in their analyses of EU regional policy (August 2024).

• Süddeutsche Zeitung and Politico covered our work on EU regional policies (June 2024). 

• We published a Policy Brief on EU regional policies with the Jacques Delors Centre (June 2024).

• Le Monde covered our research on inequality in the EU (May 2024).