When you meet Moritz Schularick in Bonn, he usually greets you in his office at the university. Sometimes he also suggests going to a café with the incredibly old-fashioned name “Sahneweiß”. Schularick is now leaving this tranquil world of the former federal capital. The pullover wearer with the messy hair is likely to put on a suit more often in the future: the economist, born in 1975, becomes president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW), one of the largest economic research institutes in the country, after a long drama.
Schularick made a name for himself internationally early on, which is unusual for German economists. Barely 30, he and British historian Niall Ferguson coined the term Chimerica, describing the longstanding symbiosis between superpowers China and America, which has since become a rivalry. He also caused a sensation with his research on what can be learned from past financial crises. In recent years he has been actively involved in debates about the right corona strategy and a gas embargo against Russia.
The institute, which is mainly financed by the federal government and the state of Schleswig-Holstein, now hopes to leave rather difficult times behind with the global economist. The more than 100-year-old research house is considered the first address for international economic and trade issues. At the end of Dennis Snower’s long term of office from 2004 to 2019, however, the people of Kiel lost some of their importance. The ever-dynamic Gabriel Felbermayr from the Ifo Institute took over, but moved to his native Austria after just two years. Since then there has been an interim solution.
Schularick’s name came up early in the replacement, as did Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln from Frankfurt and Markus Brunnermeier from Princeton. Schularick was also in demand at the Frankfurt Safe Institute for Financial Market Research, which he turned down in the end. The long strangling about the IfW appointment can be explained by the Byzantine decision-making structure of the institute’s sponsors, but also by Schularick’s hesitation.
His radiance should rub off on his new place of work
The researcher received the most important German research prize Leibniz in 2022 and frequently advises finance ministries, central banks and international organizations. His charisma is likely to rub off on his new place of work, but at the same time he has to get used to running a company with many employees.
With his focus on globalization and international issues, Schularick fits perfectly into the tradition of the house. At the same time, he stands out because he has recently become more and more involved in top political issues. During the corona pandemic, he vehemently criticized the slow procurement of vaccines. After the Russian attack on Ukraine, he and other economists calculated that Germany could cope with a gas embargo against the aggressor Vladimir Putin overall. This was seen differently by other researchers and rejected by the federal government, resulting in the most heated economic debate of the year, which was sometimes conducted in very harsh terms.
Schularick has also conducted research at Harvard, Cambridge and New York. He was critical of the fact that some economic advisors in politics in Germany were not sufficiently globally oriented. “It’s not good for a country to be advised by people who are almost invisible in international scientific discourses,” he said.
It is remarkable that the economist fits perfectly with the global economic focus of the IfW, but not at all with another tradition of the institute. Presidents such as Herbert Giersch and Horst Siebert usually argued in a strictly market-liberal manner. Schularick has done a lot of research on inequality. In a study, he showed that more than half of the increases in the value of real estate over the past decade went into the pockets of the ten percent richest in Germany. In an SZ interview, he called for such profits to be taxed more heavily. And explained with a barely concealed swipe at the Munich Ifo Institute: “There will always be an economist in Munich who says that redistribution should no longer take place.”