Ludger Woessmann is Professor of Economics at the University of Munich and Director of the ifo Center for the Economics of Education at the ifo Institute. His main research interests are the determinants of long-run prosperity and of student achievement. He uses microeconometric methods to answer applied, policy-relevant questions of the empirical economics of education, often using international student achievement tests. Special focuses address the importance of education for economic prosperity – individual and societal, historical and modern – and the importance of institutions of the school systems for efficiency and equity. Further research topics cover aspects of economic history, economics of religion, and the Internet.

His work was rewarded, among others, with the Hermann Heinrich Gossen Award and the Gustav Stolper Award of the German Economic Association, the Young Economist Award of the European Economic Association, the EIB Prize of the European Investment Bank, and the Choppin Memorial Award of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement. Woessmann studied economics at Marburg University, the University of Kent at Canterbury, and the Advanced Studies Program of the Kiel Institute for World Economics, where he subsequently worked. He received his PhD from the University of Kiel. He held the 2010 National Fellowship at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and spent extended research visits at Harvard University and the National Bureau of Economic Research.

He is Fellow of the International Academy of Education, Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech, and the Academic Advisory Council of the German Federal Ministry of Economics, former Chairman of the Research Committee on Economics of Education in the German Economic Association, and coordinator of the European Expert Network on the Economics of Education (EENEE). He is co-editor of the Handbook of the Economics of Education and co-organizer of the annual CESifo Area Conference on the Economics of Education and held over 350 invited presentations. Among his over 300 academic publications are over 90 articles in refereed journals, including Science, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Economic Journal, European Economic Review, Journal of Economic Growth, Journal of Human Resources, Journal of Development Economics, and Journal of Public Economics, as well as several books. Google Scholar lists over 20,000 citations to his research (h-index 63). His research is regularly covered by the national and international media.

He joined IZA as a Research Affiliate in September 2001 and became a Research Fellow in December 2003.