Dirk Sliwka studied economics at the University of Bonn and the École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique (Ensae) in Paris. He received his degree as Diplom-Volkswirt in 1995. He was a student in the European Doctoral Programme in Quantitative Economics at the University of Bonn and the London School of Economics and received his Ph.D. in 1999 from the University of Bonn for his doctoral dissertation entitled "On Incentives and the Decentralization of Decisions in Organizations“. Dirk Sliwka has worked as a consultant for SAP (1999-2000) and as an Assistant Professor at the University of Bonn (2000-2003). In June 2003 he completed his post-doctoral Habilitation entitled "Performance Measurement, Responsibility, and Incentives" at the University of Bonn and is since 2004 Professor of Personnel Economics and Human Resource Management at the University of Cologne.

He has published for instance in the American Economic Review, Management Science, Journal of Labor Ecopnomics, Labour Economics, Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics, European Economic Review, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaft and Zeitschrift für Betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung.

His research interests include Personnel Economics and Human Resource Management, Labor Economics, the Economics of Organization and Behavioural Economics.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in July 2003.