Ludger Woessmann

Director of the ifo Center for the Economics of Education and Professor of Economics at the University of Munich

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.

He is Fellow of the International Academy of Education, the Academia Europaea, the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and the Academic Advisory Council of the German Federal Ministry of Economics. He was coordinator of the European Expert Network on the Economics of Education (EENEE) and is co-editor of the Handbook of the Economics of Education and Joint Area Director for Economics of Education of the CESifo Network. Among his over 400 academic publications are over 100 articles in refereed journals, including Science, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Journal of Economic Literature. Google Scholar lists over 50,000 citations to his research (h-index 92), which is regularly covered by the international media.

His work was rewarded 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, and the Choppin Memorial Award of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Woessmann 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.

For additional information, see Ludger Woessmann's personal website.