ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Gebhard Kirchgässner

Gebhard Kirchgässner (b. 1948) is professor emeritus of Economics and Econometrics and former director of the Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economic Research at the University of St. Gallen. In 2013-14, he was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin). Born in 1948 in Konstanz, he studied Economics, Political Science and Statistics at the University of Konstanz and earned a PhD in social sciences (rerum socialium) in 1976 (supervised by Bruno Frey). He served as academic assistant at the University of Konstanz from 1976 to 1977 and at the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich) from 1977 to 1984. He completed his habilitation in Economics and Econometrics at the University of Konstanz in 1981. From 1984 to 1992, Kirchgässner acted as professor of Economics, in particular Public Finance, at the University of Osnabrück, before taking up his position at the University of St. Gallen. He is research fellow of the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, and of the economic research group CESifo in Munich. He holds an honorary doctoral degree of the University of Fribourg His main research focus lies on new political economy, applied econometrics, methodological principles of the social sciences as well as on energy and environmental economics. Currently, besides problems of direct democracy and federalism, his research deals with the political economy of scientific policy advice.