Prof. Dr. Lars Feld

Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c.. Lars P. Feld is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Freiburg and Director of the Walter Eucken Institute. From 2011 to 2021, he was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts, most recently ist chairman. From 2013 until his retirement, he represented the Council of Economic Experts on the Independent Advisory Board of the Stability Council. He has been a scientific member of the Minimum Wage Commission since January 2020 and a member of the Scientific Advisory Council to the Federal Ministry of Finance since 2003.

Since February 2022, the member of the Kronberg Circle has held the honorary position of "Personal Representative of the Federal Minister of Finance for Macroeconomic Development" and evaluates macroeconomic issues, also valued for his ordoliberal convictions. He advocates a sound fiscal policy to comply with the debt brake.

Feld is also a full member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (National Academy of Sciences), the Academia Europaea and the Mont Pèlerin Society. In 2007, he was appointed as an expert to the Bundestag and Bundesrat Commission on the Modernization of Federal-Länder Financial Relations (Federalism Commission II). From 2007 to 2009 he was president of the European Public Choice Society, from 2004 to 2012 he was editor of the Economic Policy Perspectives of the Verein für Socialpolitik, and from 2014 to 2015 he was a member of the expert commission "Strengthening Investment in Germany" of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy ("Fratzscher Commission").

"I am a regulatory economist in terms of rule orientation in politics. But the term regulatory policy is so ambiguous that expectations are probably wrong in many respects. I'm relatively pragmatic."

After studying economics at Saarland University (1987-1993), he earned his doctorate (1999) and habilitation (2002) at the University of St. Gallen. From 2002 to 2006, he was a university professor of finance at the Philipps University of Marburg and subsequently a university professor of finance at the Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg until 2010. Stays abroad took him to the University of Southern California (Los Angeles), Stanford University and Princeton University. He was awarded the Wicksell Prize of the European Public Choice Society in 1996 and the Excellence in Refereeing Award of the American Economic Review in 2008, and has been in the top ten of the most influential German economists identified by FAZ every year since 2013. In 2017, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Lucerne. In 2021, the Gustav Stolper Prize of the Verein für Socialpolitik, and in 2023, the University Medal of the University of Freiburg and the Golden Friedrich List Medal.

His research focuses on various areas of finance and economic policy. "Studies show that high complexity leads to more tax dishonesty. Many citizens no longer understand the rules and therefore make mistakes when filing taxes." Other areas of focus include the New Political Economy and the economic analysis of law. Feld demands, "We have to go back to a system in which no euro country is liable for another." This principle, he says, must be combined with an insolvency regime for states.