“Professor Wieland is one of the most brilliant scientists in monetary macroeconomics”, Bert Rürup, chairman of the selection committee, said at the spring meeting of the Monetary Workshop at the beginning of May in Frankfurt. According to the committee’s statement, Wieland not only holds a critical opinion concerning the monetary policy of the European Central Bank (ECB). He also supports a stabilization policy that focuses on limiting government spending. “In doing so, he often opposes against the common views in the Anglosaxon world, which currently preach a more expansionary monetary and fiscal policy”, Rürup explained the committee’s decision.
Wieland was able to describe why and under which conditions saving in economic crises was necessary and why the natural interest rate R-Star – a variable that can only be estimated – cannot be permanently negative even when central banks’ interest rates may be temporarily negative. Apart from his research, Wieland also acted as consultant in economic policy.
Wieland holds the Endowed Chair of Monetary Economics at the Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS) since 2012 and is the institute’s Managing Director. Since 2013 he is a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. He is also a research fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London and a member of Kronberger Kreis and of the Scientific Advisory Council of the German Ministry of Finance. He has served as a consultant to a number of international institutions including, such as the ECB, the European Commission, the Federal Reserve Board and the Reserve Bank of Finland. In 1995, he received a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford. Before joining the Frankfurt faculty in November 2000, Volker Wieland was a senior economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, DC.
His research has been published in leading scientific journals, e.g. the American Economic Review, the Journal of Monetary Economics and the Journal of the European Economic Association. Currently, one of main research projects consists in the development of an open database for comparing macroeconomic models, the Macroeonomic Model Data Base (www.macromodelbase.com). On the open platform, which now offers 128 models, researchers can share formulas and codes of their models and also reproduce the calculations of others. In a joint research project with Hoover Institution at Stanford University supported by the Sloan Foundation, the Macroeconomic Modeling and Comparison Initiative (MMCI), the database is being developed and enlarged.
Founded 30 years ago, the Monetary Workshop is an association of economists who work at companies, in the banking sector, at central banks, ministries, universities and international organizations. Twice a year, the Workshop comes together to discuss current issues in monetary policy. At its 2019 spring meeting, the digitalization in economics and the challenges for private and central banks were in the focus. The Monetary Workshop is currently headed by Joachim Nagel, member of the executive board of KfW Group and former board member of Deutsche Bundesbank. Since 2913 the Monetary Workshop awards outstanding achievements in research or practical application in monetary economics. The first prize winner was Otmar Issing, the ECB’s first chief economist.