Volker Wieland: “I am very much looking forward to contributing to the Council’s work. It’s our legal mandate to facilitate the assessments among all those responsible for economic policy as well as the public. Germany is doing well. The German economy is experiencing a strong upswing, employment is at a record level, income distribution has been stable for about twelve years. In order to continue growing, forward-oriented economic policy measures are necessary.”
Besides his focus on free market economy conditions in Germany, Wieland will pay particular attention to the developments in Europe. “The growing burden through taxes and levies has to be stopped and further reduced. Market economies and labor markets need a flexible regulatory framework that is open for innovation in order to master new challenges caused by globalization, digitalization and demographic change. Apart from that, the developments in Europe are a matter of particular concern to me. The European Union must focus on the areas where European citizens can be convinced that the problems can only be solved at the EU level e.g. migration, security, climate change. It is extremely important for Germany to put the monetary union into a crisis-resistant position. This is not possible without strengthening individual responsibility and competitiveness of the member states.”
Wieland has already been forming part of the Council from March 2013 to February 2018. He holds the Endowed Chair of Monetary Economics at the IMFS and serves as its Managing Director. The tasks, competences and powers of central banks in monetary policy and the extended regulation and financial supervision are in the focus of the interdisciplinary research at the IMFS. One of Wieland’s most important research projects is the development and extension of an open source platform for comparing and replicating macroeconomic models: the Macroeconomic Model Data Base.
In 1995, Wieland received a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford and then worked as a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, DC. His research has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review, the European Economic Review and the Journal of Monetary Economics. He was a consultant for the European Central Bank (ECB), the European Commission and the central bank of Finland. Since 2004 he has been organizing the conference series “The ECB and Its Watchers”, a forum for central bankers, academics and market participants. He is also a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London, a member of the Kronberger Kreis, that is the Scientific Council of the Market Economy Foundation, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the German Ministry of Finance.
The German Council of Economic Experts is an academic body advising policy-makers on questions of economic policy. It was set up by law in 1963. In line with its legal mandate, the Council compiles and publishes an Annual Economic Report which is released in November. Further members of the Council are Christoph M. Schmidt (chair), Peter Bofinger, Lars P. Feld and Isabel Schnabel.