Economics: Evidence-based Policy Research
Societal challenges – climate change, digitalisation, migration, wars, demographic change, and the lack of sustainability of public finances and welfare states – threaten the functioning of goods, financial and labour markets. Policy responses frequently take the form of government interventions that are often publicly contested. The research area Evidence-Based Policy therefore focuses on linking theory and empirical evidence (e.g. forecasts of policy effects), the design of institutional measures, and their evaluation (impacts, side-effects, and reform needs). Our research concentrates in particular on three fields: Behavioural Economics and Societal Transformation, the Future of Work, and Globalisation and International Trade.
The first focus is behavioural economics. The Institute of Economics at Leuphana leads the Research Cluster Behavioural Economics and Societal Transformation, an interdisciplinary network of professors from seven universities in Lower Saxony and the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology. Against the background of fundamental research in behavioural economics, we examine how transformation processes affect behaviour (e.g. consumption behaviour in times of climate change; voting behaviour when people feel “left behind”) and outcomes (e.g. changes in party systems due to migration; labour-market effects of automation and digitalisation), and how these effects differ across social groups. Our empirical work emphasises heterogeneous agents (urban/rural, income, gender, social/cultural diversity, risk preferences, political attitudes). To support this research, we have established the Lower Saxony Panel, a population-representative participant pool for systematically studying attitudes, preferences and decisions of people in Lower Saxony.
The second focus examines the Future of Work. This includes gender differences in the labour market – such as the gender pay gap – and the economic effects of works councils and temporary agency work on firm performance, staff turnover, employee health, and absenteeism. In the areas of demographic change and migration we analyse empirically relevant questions for future labour markets, for example effects on employment, wages, productivity, training, health, and wage assimilation of immigrants. The Institute of Economics is also involved in the Leuphana AI Campus and the Research Centre for Digital Transformation, researching the impacts of new technologies and artificial intelligence on education and labour markets.
The third focus addresses the effects of Globalisation and International Trade on firms and workers. From a security-policy perspective, the economic resilience of national economies regarding trade effects and global supply chains is a central theme. We investigate, among other things, the influence of financial markets on trade flows, the role of innovation for multinational firms, and the interaction between tax policy and globalisation. Our aim is to quantify welfare and income effects of international trade and to derive policy recommendations in response to globalisation processes – for example concerning the unequal distribution of trade gains, the market power of large multinationals, and controversies over trade liberalisation and counter-movements (“backlash to globalisation”).
Junior Professorship in Microeconomics
Prof. Dr. Luise Görges
Professorship in Microeconometrics and Policy Evaluation
Prof. Dr. Boris Hirsch
Junior Professorship in Law & Economics
Prof. Dr. Johannes Lohse
Professorship in Empirical Microeconomics
Prof. Dr. Mario Mechtel
Professorship in Applied Microeconomics
Prof. Dr. Christian Pfeifer
Professorship in Macroeconomics
Prof. Dr. Florian Unger
Professorship in Empirical Economics
Prof. Dr. Joachim Wagner
Junior Professorship in Quantitative Methods in Economics
Prof. Dr. Christoph Wegener
Professorship in Economic Policy
Prof. Dr. Thomas Wein
Honorary Professorship
Prof. Dr. Uwe Jean Heuser
Within the Research Cluster Behavioural Economics and Societal Transformation we coordinate a consortium of all universities in Lower Saxony with a focus on behavioural economics. We work closely with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology (FIT), Department of Microsimulation & Econometric Data Analysis. The Institute for Employment Research (IAB) and the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH, a Leibniz institute) are also close cooperation partners.
At Leuphana University Lüneburg, we are involved in the Leuphana AI Campus, the Democratic Resilience cluster, and the Research Center for Digital Transformation.
Members of the Institute of Economics publish their work in leading international journals (for example Economic Journal, Energy Economics, European Economic Review, Experimental Economics, Industrial and Labor Relations Review, International Economic Review, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of International Economics, Journal of Labor Economics, PNAS).
Our research attracts wide media attention, and we engage in political and public debates through various channels. Recent discussions of our work have appeared, for example, in DIE ZEIT, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, Die Welt, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Focus, and Spektrum der Wissenschaft.
We regularly organise academic conferences and events for the interested public. The “Workshop on Microeconomics”, which has an almost twenty-year history, has been held annually at Leuphana in spring since 2016. We also host conferences as part of the doctoral colleges and the research cluster “Behavioural Economics and Societal Transformation”. In September 2025, the international workshop “Experiments for the Environment” will take place in Lüneburg. In addition, we contribute to lecture series, organise talks on the annual expert reports of the German Council of Economic Experts, and hold events related to the Nobel Prize in Economics.
Our main research fields are directly reflected in the content of our Master’s programme “Public Affairs and Economics” and in the doctoral colleges “Economics” and “Behavioural Economics and Societal Transformation”. Our research topics are already systematically integrated into the Bachelor’s major and minor programmes. This ensures research-oriented teaching at the frontier of the discipline. We support excellent students on the path to a PhD at Leuphana via our doctoral track.