How I became an Economist
My passion for Economics was not love at first sight.
I received my undergraduate degree in Germany where university studies were free, but highly selective. During my first days I sat in huge lecture halls with more than seven hundred students, many of them standing in the hallway or sitting on the floor for lack of seats. And I was terrified. One of my professors told the class not to worry, upper-level classes will be much smaller after roughly 50 percent of all students within the first two semester will be “sieved out.” Indeed, the second semester was known as the sieving-out semester, and the sieving-out course -- with a failure rate of above 50% -- was Microeconomic Theory.
I was afraid of failing Microeconomic Theory and of disappointing my parents, friends, and, most importantly, myself. I studied in Bayreuth, a city some 200 miles away from my hometown Stuttgart. I still remember the day when my father went with me to Bayreuth to help me move into my student apartment. When he told me good-bye, he said: “Marcus, I am leaving you now with many freedoms. You make new friends, visit new places, and attend student parties. And then he continued, saying, “Marcus, all of this is fine with me. Just remember one thing: I am paying for everything, so please do not forget to study.”
Microeconomics was suddenly more than an academic challenge; it became the ultimate test for proving myself as a young person who can handle his freedom with responsibility.
I was still an undergraduate student when the Berlin Wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed. Exactly 200 years after the French Revolution, I found myself in the middle of another revolution of similar dimensions and history in the making. Quickly it became clear that the German unification and the transformation process in Central and Eastern Europe require a lot of economic expertise and that economics is a real-world science, not just some ivory tower vanity fair. Moreover, until 1989, there was only the field of Comparative Economics, now there was the new field of Transformation Economics, and I wanted to be part of it.
When I graduated from the University of Bayreuth, I was offered a doctoral research position at the University of Ilmenau, which is in the former German Democratic Republic of Germany. There, I witnessed the transformation process and the social hardship associated with it first-hand. Most of the people in Ilmenau worked in a glass-making factory that employed several thousand people directly and indirectly. After the factory was privatized, the number of employed shrank to a couple of hundred. I realized that what makes economic sense does not necessarily pass the political selection test in a democracy. I eventually wrote my doctoral thesis about the political limits and challenges of the economic transformation process.
My fascination for the interaction of economic and political dynamics has shaped my research interest ever since, and soon it was not only limited to countries in transition.
Teaching Statement
I am passionate about economics and feel thankful for the opportunity to work as a professor. For me, being able to work with students is a privilege and responsibility.
Being passionate about a certain subject is probably the most important factor of effective teaching. When I was a student, my favorite professor gave the worst lectures, seemed never prepared, was constantly all over the place, made mistakes on the board, but when he did so, could laugh about himself.
I also had another teacher who was the exact opposite. He gave perfect lectures, never made a mistake on the board, prepared useful handouts, and organized the entire semester with Swiss clockwork precision.
Yet my favorite teacher was the one I described first, and the explanation is simple: I learned more from him. His passion more than compensated for all his didactical deficiencies. The first teacher made me want to understand and learn more, the second teacher made me want to get done with the subject and forget about it.
No, my teaching philosophy is not to emulate the first teacher.
Passion is surely a necessary condition for teaching effectiveness, but not sufficient. My favorite professor probably could have won over many more students' hearts and minds, if he had been not only passionate, but well organized as well.
I accordingly take class preparation very seriously. In practice this means that I write all my lecture notes and problem sets myself. Beginning with the pandemic, I also started to make videos in which I go over the lectures and problem sets.
Making those videos has proven to be a useful exercise to organize my lectures. In addition, I realized that certain topics which require the use of software (such as Excel for statistics) can be more effectively taught when students see a video that they can pause.
I generally design my classes such that conceptual and applied passages are balanced. Especially in economics and statistics, students become more quickly interested into a specific concept, if, for example, I visit in class the World Bank Development Indicator Database, download real world data, and link theory to real world applicability.
Another important aspect in my field is problem solving as an important vehicle of learning. I often reserve some time for students to work as a group on a problem set and then present their solution on the board to the class.
In sum, I strive to use my passion to motivate students. By connecting theory and practice, I try to illustrate the relevance of the material. With problem solving, I hope to stimulate group work and inclusiveness. Lastly, by employing online technology, I aim to provide flexibility and alternative learning formats.
Research Statement
I am mainly interested in the following question:
“Which economic policies promote peaceful socioeconomic development?”
In my research I am explicitly or implicitly guided by social market economic thought. The concept of the social market economy developed in Germany in the 1930s amidst great political turmoil. In Germany and Europe, socialism was on the rise in response to the social problems created by 19th century capitalism. After World War II, fascism emerged as an alternative to both capitalism and socialism. Beginning with the 1930s, a group of German economists began to develop the concept of the Social Market Economy as a response to all fascism, socialism, and laissez-faire capitalism. The concept of the Social Market Economy eventually guided Germany's post World War II recovery, and ultimately shaped Europe's economic constitution.
In Social Market Economics, the idea of the human being is characterized by both self-interest and social responsibility. This distinguishes Social Market Economics from laissez-faire capitalism and socialism, whose philosophies rest on assumptions regarding the idea of a human being that are characterized exclusively by self-interest and social responsibility, respectively.
The focus of Social Market Economics is on principles of economic policy. These principles, in turn, are closely related to the field of Economic Humanism and the School of Freiburg with its concept of “Ordoliberalism.” In essence, “Ordoliberalism” is a set of state-constituting, state-political, market-organizational, and market-failure correcting principles, which ideally guide economic policy to assure that the freedom in the market drives equitable social development.
In my research I typically identify a certain socioeconomic challenge and examine it in the context of deviations from Social Market Economic principles. I have written on the relationship between food insecurity and political instability, showing how insufficient social safety nets and non-market conform social policies (such as price ceilings for food items) contribute to political instability. Another research focus has been the question why so many foreign fighters join the so-called Islamic State. Again, we find that insufficient social safety nets, specifically that passive labor market programs promote expat jihadism more than active ones. My academic research is mostly data driven.
While it is important to write for an academic audience, and certainly is necessary to stay current, I believe it is equally important to make research available to non-academic audiences and public policy. In addition to my academic research, I also have conducted contracted research projects for the World Food Program, the United Nations Economic and Social Division for Western Asia, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation.