Armin Falk

Armin Falk is Professor of Economics at the University of Bonn, Director of the Institute on Behavior and Inequality (briq) and of the Laboratory for Experimental Economics (BonnEconLab).

After studying economics and philosophy at the University of Cologne, Falk earned his doctoral degree at the University of Zurich, where he also obtained his habilitation. Falk’s research generally aims at increasing the explanatory power of economics by providing a more realistic psychological and biological foundation. This research is mostly based on large and representative samples using experimentally validated measures, but also neuroscientific methods.

Falk is affiliated with multiple networks: He is Program Director at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA), as well as Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy (CEPR), Fellow at the Center for Economic Studies (CESifo) and Research Professor at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW). Reflecting his academic achievements, Falk was elected as Member in the academic advisory council of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology (BMWi) in 2009, which he served until 2020. Also in 2009, he became External Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods and member of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und Künste.

Falk has received various important academic awards. In 2008 he was successful in applying for a European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant. The same year he received the “Gossen Award” of the Verein für Socialpolitik. In 2009 Falk was awarded the highly prestigious “Gottfried-Wilhelm Leibniz Award” of the German Science Foundation (DFG). As first German economist he gained the “Yrjö-Jahnsson-Award” of the European Economic Association (EEA) in 2011 and later that year Falk received the Prize of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. In 2014 he was granted the Prize of the “Wirtschaftspolitischer Club Deutschland e.V.”. One year later Falk earned a Europe Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant. The DIW recognized Falk’s excellence in scholarship by awarding him the Felix Büchel Award in 2018.