No. 4 - Ludger Schuknecht

German. Economist, former Chief Economist at the German Ministry of Finance, former Deputy Secretary-General of the OECD. Schuknecht studied Economics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and George Mason University. In June 2000 he obtained his habilitation from the University of Constance. Previously Schuknecht was Chief Economist at the German Ministry of Finance and heading the Directorate General Fiscal Policy and International Financial and Monetary Policy there. In this role he advised Minister Wolfgang Schäuble on economic policy issues in the domestic and international sphere. Schuknecht left after the departure of the fiscally conservative Schäuble and the arrival of his social democrat successor Olaf Scholz. In 2019, he was replaced with Jakob von Weizsäcker. Before that Schuknecht was Senior Advisor in the Directorate General of Economics of the European Central Bank where he prepared monetary policy decision making. Schuknecht had also headed the ECB’s fiscal surveillance section and served with the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund. As a scholar, Schuknecht’s research focuses on public expenditure policies and reform and the analysis of economic boom-bust episodes. Together with Vito Tanzi he published “Public Spending in the 20th Century: A Global Perspective”.

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