My Profile - Short Introduction

I was born in Zurich, Switzerland in 1972. When I was two, we moved to Madrid (Spain), where we stayed ten years. I went to high school in Schwyz (Switzerland). Undecided about what to study at the University of Zurich in 1994, my brother Andreas, who at that time was just finishing his studies in business administration, said to me: “I see you as a typical economics student. Take this book about economics to see whether you know what to do with it”. Interestingly, it was the book Wirtschaft, Staat und Wohlfahrt written by René L. Frey, which I started to read immediately and which attracted my attention and helped in my decision to study economics. Interestingly, after my studies in Zurich I became an assistant at his department in 2000.

One of the first lectures attended at the University of Zurich was given by Bruno S. Frey, showing how the economic way of thinking and analysing can be fruitfully used to analyse social problems which go beyond the traditional topics of economics. As a consequence, from that day on there was often a divergence between those books and papers which I had to read in some classes, based on the traditional economic approach, and the ones that I preferred to read focusing on the expansion of economics to other spheres and on the reorientation of economics including aspects of other social sciences. My research agenda as you will see has strongly been influenced by Bruno Frey’s research activities.

In 2000-2003, I was book review editor of the economic journal KYKLOS, working as assistant at the University of Basel under René L. Frey. I have received my doctorate in economics from the University of Basel in July 2003 (summa cum laude). In July/August 2003, I was Program Visitor at the Centre for Tax System Integrity Research School of Social Sciences (Australian National University Canberra).

From September 2003 to August 2004, I was Visiting Scholar at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.

From September 2004 to Augst 2006, I was a Research Affiliate at the Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, Leitner Program in International & Comparative Political Economy.

I am now since September 2006 a Visiting Scholar at the UC Berkeley.

I am also research fellow of the Center for Research in Economics, Management and the Arts (CREMA) in Switzerland.

 

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