Curriculum Vitae

Longer Version

Ludger Woessmann is Director of the ifo Center for the Economics of Education and Professor of Economics at the University of Munich. He is also Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. Being interested in the determinants of long-term prosperity of mankind, his main research focus is on the economics of education, especially the importance of education for economic prosperity and the effects of school systems on educational achievement and equality of opportunity. He uses microeconometric methods to answer applied, policy-relevant questions, often using international student achievement tests. Further research topics cover aspects of economic history, economics of religion, economic growth, and labor economics.  

His work was rewarded, among others, with the Hermann Heinrich Gossen Award and the Gustav Stolper Award of the German Economic Association, the Young Economist Award of the European Economic Association, the EIB Prize of the European Investment Bank, and the Choppin Memorial Award of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Woessmann studied economics at Marburg University, the University of Kent at Canterbury, and the Advanced Studies Program of the Kiel Institute for World Economics, where he subsequently worked. He received his PhD from the University of Kiel. He held the 2010 National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and spent extended research visits at Harvard University and the National Bureau of Economic Research. 

He is Fellow of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech, the Academia Europaea, the Academic Advisory Council of the German Federal Ministry of Economics, and the International Academy of Education, former Chairman of the Research Committee on Economics of Education in the German Economic Association, and former coordinator of the European Expert Network on the Economics of Education (EENEE). He is co-editor of the Handbook of the Economics of Education, Joint Area Director for Economics of Education of the CESifo Network, and held over 400 invited presentations. Among his over 400 academic publications are over 100 articles in refereed journals, including Science, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Economic Journal, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Development Economics, and Journal of Public Economics, as well as several books. Google Scholar lists over 50,000 citations to his research (h-index 92). His research is regularly covered by the national and international media.