uni'alumni 2016

Prof. Dr. Tim Krieger, holder of the Wilfried Guth Endowed Chair of Regulation and Competition Policy since its establishment in 2012, is occasion- ally skeptical of the passion with which some of his colleagues attempt to explain the real world solely on the basis of mathematical models. To understand why, one needs only to look at the economist’s research interests: economic, social, and educational policy in open and aging economies, competition between Europe’s taxation and social systems, migration and international worker mobility – eco- nomic issues with a political dimension, in which it is often necessary to take into account findings from research in the political and social sciences. Social Security, Terrorism, Financial Crisis Krieger began studying the conse- quences of migration for the pension schemes of aging societies in his doc- toral dissertation, which he completed in Munich in 2004 and for which he received the research award of the German Pension Scheme. In 2010, as a junior professor in Paderborn, he pub- lished research on the relationship between education, unemployment, and migration in a well-known economics journal. Today, articles on his current research can also be found in respected political science journals. For example, Krieger examines the economic causes of terrorism and calls into question the common belief that investments in edu- cation can reduce the attraction of terror- ist organizations. His inaugural lecture in Freiburg dealt with the consequences of the financial crisis for Europe’s stand- ing in the global economy. These are issues of great topical in- terest in politics, and they need to be analyzed from an interdisciplinary per- spective. “You might say I sometimes have a good nose for such topics,” says Krieger with a laugh. On his bookshelf is a first edition of Walter Eucken’s The Foundations of Economics alongside the works of Wilfried Guth, after whom his chair is named. The chair’s sponsors, the Baden-Baden Forum for Executives, aim to promote research and teaching on European and international regula- tion and competition policy in the ordo- liberal tradition of the Freiburg School. Classical Approach, New Questions This aim coincided with Krieger’s inter- est in issues of global economic govern- ance. The ordoliberalism of the Freiburg School, which formed the basis for the social market economy and thus also for Germany’s economic miracle after 1945, “unfortunately no longer receives much attention from scholars,” says the re- searcher, who was only 40 years old when he was appointed to the chair. However, he believes that the classical approach has a future if it is expanded to include the regulatory issues of today’s globalized world and seeks to forge links with modern institutional econom- ics. Krieger thus feels right at home in Freiburg. “I saw my appointment to this professorship as an opportunity to in- vestigate questions like the following: What ties in with the classical theory of regulatory policy? How can we develop it further?” He sees exciting new topics on the horizon, such as determining the consequences of digitalization for com- panies and consumers. The regulatory question of who – at the national and in- ternational level – should be given ac- cess to private data, for instance, has hardly been explored at all yet by econ- omists, although it will be essential for the consumer behavior of future genera- tions of Internet and smartphone users. Verena Adt » www.think-ordo.de PORTRAIT Tim Krieger has held the Wilfried Guth Endowed Chair of Regulation and Competition Policy since 2012. Photo: Thomas Kunz Taking the Freiburg School Further Tim Krieger is studying economic issues with a political dimension 28 University News uni'alumni 2016

Seitenübersicht