Panu Poutvaara is Professor of Economics at the University of Munich and Director of the Ifo Center for Migration and Development Economics.

Poutvaara received his doctorate in 2002 from the University of Helsinki. In 1999-2000, he was Visiting Fellow at Harvard University through Fulbright Program. He worked as Research Fellow at CEBR in Denmark from 2002 to 2005, and as professor at the University of Helsinki from 2005 until September 2010. He was member of Germany's Expert Council on Integration and Migration from 2019 to 2025.

Poutvaara's main research interests are migration, public economics, and political economics, with many ongoing projects related to return and return intentions and integration outcomes of Ukrainian refugees, after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. His work has been published in the Journal of the European Economic Association, Economic Journal, PNAS, European Economic Review, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Health Economics, and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, among other journals. His work has been covered in different media outlets, including the Economist, New York Times, Newsweek, the Atlantic, Washington Post, Huffington Post, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, and der Spiegel.

Poutvaara is editorial board member of the European Journal of Political Economy and the Leadership Quarterly.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in May 2004.