Guntram Wolff


Guntram Wolff is an economist and European public policy scholar. As of September 2024, he is professor of economics at Université Libre de Bruxelles, senior fellow at Bruegel, and senior fellow at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He was the director of Bruegel from 2013 to 2022, and director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations from 2022 to 2024.

Education

Wolff holds a PhD from the University of Bonn, studied economics in Bonn, Toulouse, Pittsburgh and Passau. He is fluent in German, English, French and has some knowledge of Bulgarian and Spanish.

Career

Wolff joined Bruegel in 2011 from the European Commission, where he worked on the macroeconomics of the euro area and the reform of euro area governance. Prior to joining the commission, he was coordinating the research team on fiscal policy at Deutsche Bundesbank. He also worked as an adviser to the International Monetary Fund.
Wolff's research is focused on European governance, climate policy, geo- and defence economics and macroeconomics and has been published in academic journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Communications, Energy Policy, Climate Policy, Research Policy, Journal of European Public Policy, European Journal of Political Economy, Public Choice and Journal of Banking and Finance. He regularly testifies to the European Union Finance Ministers’ ECOFIN meeting, the European Parliament, the German Parliament and the French Parliament. From 2012 until 2016, he was a member of the Conseil d'Analyse Économique under successive Prime Ministers Jean-Marc Ayrault and Manuel Valls. He has also been an honorary professor at the Willy Brandt School of Public Policy at University Erfurt.
In 2013, Wolff joined the Glienicker Gruppe, a group of pro-European lawyers, economists and political scientists founded by Jakob von Weizsäcker and Maximilian Steinbeis.
In 2018, IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde appointed Wolff to the External Advisory Group on Surveillance, a group mandated to review the Fund's operational priorities through 2025. In early 2021, he was appointed by the G20 as panel member and project director in charge of the High Level Independent Panel on financing the global commons for pandemic preparedness and response, co-chaired by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Lawrence Summers.
Wolff has taught economics at the University of Pittsburgh and at Université libre de Bruxelles. His columns and policy work are published and cited in leading international media such as the Financial Times, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Caixin, Nikkei, El País, La Stampa, FAZ, Handelsblatt, Les Echos, BBC, ZDF, among others.

Other activities

Selected Publications

Journal articles

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