Philipp Kircher holds the position of professor of economics at the European University Institute and the University of Edinburgh. He received his PhD from the University of Bonn in 2006, and previously held positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Oxford and the London School of Economics. He is a fellow of the Econometrics Society and the EEA, and served as managing editor and chairman of the Review of Economic Studies. His research focusses on the consequences of search frictions in labor markets, in particular regarding wage setting and assignment of workers to jobs. He also works on the economics of epidemics in the context of HIV/AIDS and now Covid-19. His papers have been published in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others. His research is currently supported by an ERC consolidator grant and has previous been funded by an ERC starting grant, by the ESRC, and by the NSF.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in May 2019.