Institute for Macroeconomics and Econometrics
Macroeconomists seek to understand how individual economic activities and economic policies affect society as a whole. Doing so, research at the Institute for Macroeconomics and Econometrics follows two approaches. On the one hand, we access and analyze microeconomic and historical data with a view toward understanding questions of current macro-economic concern. On the other hand, we develop models of the economy that take into account the heterogeneity among economic agents, such as within the household sector or the firm sector. The institute brings together leading international experts on the labor market, financial stability, business cycles and monetary policy, inequality, and economic history. The institute's mission is to contribute to academia and the wider society through excellent research on questions of social relevance.
Bonn is excellent, in teaching and research. Researchers of the institute are part of the excellence clusters ECONtribute and the Hausdorff Center for Mathematics, have been awarded research prizes and generous third-party funding, and have won multiple teaching awards.
Latest publications
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"Shocks, Frictions, and Inequality in US Business Cycles"
by Christian Bayer, Benjamin Born and Ralph Luetticke, American Economic Review, 2024
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Differences in Euro-Area Household Finances and their Relevance for Monetary-Policy Transmission
by Thomas Hintermaier and Winfried Koeniger, Quantitative Economics: Nov, 2024, Volume 15, Issue 4, pp. 1249-1301.
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"Shaping Inequality and Intergenerational Persistence of Poverty: Free College or Better Schools"
by Irina Popova, Dirk Krueger and Alexander Ludwig, forthcoming in Journal of Monetary Economics
Policy contributions
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Problem versus opportunity: Implications of immigration for workers’ welfare and entrepreneurship in Germany
VoxEU Column by Zainab Iftikhar and Anna Zaharieva, 2025
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"Pandemic consumption"
VoxEU Column by Rüdiger Bachmann, Christian Bayer and Martin Kornejew, 2024
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"Irrsinn, Unsicherheit, Sondierungspapier"
Podcast: Wirtschaftskunde mit Rüdiger Bachmann und Christian Bayer, März 2025
Conferences
The institute organizes conferences attended by guests from all over the world. The covered research topics include most areas of modern macroeconomic theory: a pure methodological contribution to game theory, mechanism design, and general equilibrium, but also a broad range of applications to information economics, industrial organization, auction and market design, political economy, and behavioral economics.
Centre of Advanced Studies Finance and Inequality
The Center for Advanced Studies "Finance and Inequality" (CASFI) at the University of Bonn aims to study the nexus between finance and inequality in a long-term historical and internationally comparative perspective. By integrating insights from financial history, business history, finance and macroeconomics the center seeks to understand how shifts in income and wealth distribution influence financial activities and vice versa. CASFI ist funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) to the tune of several million euros over the next four years.
Seminars
The Insitute conducts two weekly research seminars (one internal and one for external guests, respectively) that are also attended by BGSE students.
Teaching
Find a list of all offered courses for Bachelor, Master, and PhD-students at the Institute of Macroeconomics and Econometrics as well as information on degree theses.
Team
The Institute currently gathers a diverse, international group consisting of 6 senior/junior professors and about 5 post-docs.