Research at our chair asks when and how the state should intervene in markets. We are particularly interested in how individuals, providers and firms respond to incentives, institutions and regulation – to capacity planning and licensing restrictions, to co-payment and reimbursement rules, or to reforms of compulsory schooling and the retirement age. Understanding these behavioural responses and quantifying them is essential for judging the efficiency and distributional consequences of government intervention: what matters is not only what a policy costs, but also who ends up being served and who does not.

To estimate these effects we use modern microeconometric methods for causal inference – instrumental variables, difference-in-differences and regression discontinuity designs – typically applied to large administrative micro data, such as health insurance claims data or German and Scandinavian register data.

We invite you to take a look at our publications and current research projects. Further information can also be found on the personal homepages of our researchers.