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Studenten im Sommer auf dem Campus Nord, rote Zahnräder im Hintergrund © Roland Baege​/​TU Dortmund

Curriculum Vitae

  • Born: 21. 11. 1948 in Ormont, Eifel
  • 1969 to 1976: Studies of Mathematics and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
  • 1976: Diploma in Mathematics, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
  • 1979: Ph.D. (Dr. rer. pol.), Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
  • 1984: Habilitation in econometrics, Vienna University of Technology
  • Professional background: Research Associate, Department of Statistics, University of Mannheim; Assistant Professor, University of Western Ontario, Canada; Assistant Professor, Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna; Professor of Empirical Economics, University of Hannover, Germany
  • 1988 to 2021: Full Professor of Economic and Social Statistics, Department of Statistics, University of Dortmund; Visiting Professor, Management Institute of Fudan University, Shanghai and Graduate School of Economics, University of Bielefeld, and Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna
  • since 1977: married to wife Doris, two children, three grandchildren
  • Publications: more than 40 books and 300 academic articles on statistics, econometrics, health economics, and social and language policy. The book Die Krankheit des Gesundheitswesens (The Disease of the Health Care System ), published by S. Fischer in Frankfurt, was preprinted in Der Spiegel in 1989. The book So lügt man mit Statistik (How to lie with statistics ), published by Campus in Frankfurt in 1991, was on the bestseller list of economics textbooks in the Federal Republic for one year. Lexikon der populären Irrtümer (with Götz Trenkler), published by Eichborn in 1996, spent 78 weeks on the Spiegel bestseller list for non-fiction books and has been translated into 16 languages, including Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Korean, Italian, Polish and Slovakian - total sales worldwide above one million copies. Numerous articles on health, social and language policy in Financial Times Deutschland, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Handelsblatt, FAZ, Spiegel, Focus, Zeit and Welt.

 

Academic functions

Past

1990 to 1994: President of the Association for the Promotion of the Teaching of Statistics
1996 to 2004: Elected expert reviewer for statistics for the German Research Foundation
1999 to 2003: Member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the 1st Poverty and Wealth Report of the German Federal Government. Armuts- und Reichtumsbericht der deutschen Bundesregierung
1999 to 2003: Member of the scientific advisory board for the Low Income Panel (NIEP)
2003 to 2007: Chairman of the econometric council of the Verein für Socialpolitik
2003 to 2007: Member of the committee for the review of special research areas of the German Research Foundation
1997 to 2009: Member of the board of the DFG special research area 475: "Complexity Reduction in Multivariate Data Structures"
2005 to 2009: Chairman of the department of Statistics at TU Dortmund University
2003 to 2011: Member of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Rheinisch-Westfälisches Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitut (RWI)
2008 to 2015: Chief Editor of the German Economic Review
2008 to 2016: Member of the Board of the German Statistical Society
2005 to 2017: Member of the "Ruhr Graduate Schoool in Economics"
2009 to 2021: Chairman of the DFG Collaborative Research Center SFB 823 "Nonlinear Dynamic Models in Economics and Technology"
2016 to 2021: Vice President of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and Humanities
2015 to 2022: Member of the Science Council of the University Alliance Metropolis Ruhr
 

Current

Member, editorial board, Austrian Journal of Statistics
Co-editor, book series "SpringerBriefs in Applied Statistics and Econometrics "

 

Awards

German Language Prize 1999
Seven times in a row (2005, 2007, 2010, 2012, 2017, 2019 and 2022) voted among the 500 most influential intellectuals in Germany
First winner of the DAGStat Medal for outstanding services to statistics in Germany (2013, with Nanny Wermuth and Volker Mammitzsch)
First winner of the "Readable Science" prize of the Stiftung Lesen and the Jürgen Moll Foundation (2013)
Thünen Lecture of the Verein für Socialpolitik (2014)
First winner of the Gerhart Bruckmann Prize of the Austrian Statistical Society (2015)
Grohmann Lecture of the German Statistical Society (2016)
Winner of the getAbstract award for the best non-fiction book of the year in the category "business impact" at the Frankfurter Buchmesse 2023 (with Katharina Schüller, Thomas Bauer, Gerd Gigerenzer: Grüne fahren SUV und Joggen macht unsterblich)

 

Miscellaneous

Founder (1997) and since then chairman of the Verein Deutsche Sprache e. V.
From 2015 to 2021 chairman of the jury of the Gerhard Fürst Prize of the German Federal Statistical Office
Member of the Board of Trustees of the German Pop Foundation
Founder (with Th. Bauer and G. Gigerenzer) and since then co-organizer of "Unstatistics of the Month"
Member of www.achgut.com
Member of the Board of Trustees of the Federation of Self-Employed and the Federal Association of Medium-Sized Enterprises

 

Additional memberships

Alumni Association of the Johannes Gutenberg University, CESifo Research Network, German Finance Society (founding member), German Statistical Society, Econometric Society, European Economic Association (founding member), European Society of Population Economics (founding member), Free Democratic Party (FDP, since 1969), Society for the German Language, Geschichtsverein Prümer Land, Society of Friends of the Hebrew University,  Austrian Statistical Society, Verein für Rechtschreibung und Sprachpflege, Verein zur Förderung des schulischen Statistikunterrichts (chairman from 1989 to 1993), Westfälischer Industrieklub Dortmund e.V.

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