The MacroFinance and MacroHistory Lab is led by Moritz Schularick, hosted at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW) and affiliated with the ECONtribute Excellence Cluster. We are supported by the European Research Council and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). Aiming to lead the way in new research on central questions facing society, researchers at the Lab study the causes and consequences of financial instability and rising debt, the evolution of income and wealth inequality, as well as economic history and political economy.
You can find the latest research of the team and the Director of the Lab, Moritz Schularick, here. This website also hosts the Jordà-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory Database. The database provides comprehensive coverage of long-run macroeconomic and financial data for 18 countries since 1870. The database is the outcome of a collaborative data collection effort of many scholars over several years. We provide open access to the data under a creative commons license.
NEWS
01.05.2025 | Journal Publication
Exportweltmeister: Germany’s foreign investment returns in international comparison
The paper "Exportweltmeister: Germany’s foreign investment returns in international comparison" has been published in the Journal of International Economics.
Authors: Franziska Hünnekes, Maximilian Konradt, Moritz Schularick, Christoph Trebesch, Julian Wingenbach
18.04.2025 | Journal Publication
The distribution of household debt in the United States, 1950-2022
The paper "The distribution of household debt in the United States, 1950-2022" has been published in the Review of Economic Dynamics.
Authors: Alina K. Bartscher, Moritz Kuhn, Moritz Schularick, Ulrike I. Steins
29.01.2025 | Journal Publication
NEW PAPER
The paper "Superstar Returns: Spatial Heterogeneity in Returns to Housing" has been conditionally accepted at the Journal of Finance.
Authors: Francisco Amaral, Martin Dohmen, Sebastian Kohl, Moritz Schularick
04.12.2024 | Job offer
Internships
The Kiel Institute in Berlin accepts unsolicited applications for internships. Internships are paid and can last up to 3 months. Depending on their experience and interests, interns will support the staff in research, policy and organizational tasks. We particularly encourage female and international students of economics to apply.
21.12.2023 | Journal Publication
POPULIST LEADERS AND THE ECONOMY
Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch provide broad evidence on how countries governed by populist governments perform compared to democratic counterparts. They find that populism typically leads to economic disintegration, reduces macroeconomic stability, and weakens institutions.
13.02.2023 | NBER Working Paper
Loose monetary policy and financial instability
A new paper by Maximilian Grimm, Òscar Jordà, Moritz Schularick, and Alan M. Taylor shows that a persistently loose stance of monetary policy increases financial fragility down the road considerably. The authors investigate the causal pathways that lead to this result and argue that credit creation and asset price overheating are important intermediating channels.
14.11.2022 | Book release
"Leveraged: The New Economics of debt and financial fragility", edited by Moritz Schularick
What are the origins of financial instability in modern times? In LEVERAGED, Moritz Schularick and pioneering scholars offer insights that draw a new picture of how financial institutions and societies coexist, for better or worse. The book will be released on November 21, 2022.
07.11.2022 | Job Market Candidate
MEET OUR JOB MARKET 2022 CANDIDATE!
Ricardo Duque Gabriel is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Bonn and member of our MacroFinance & MacroHistory Lab. He is currently on the academic job market. He works at the intersection of empirical macroeconomics and finance with economic policy.
19.09.2022 | Award
Engerman-goldin prize for the jst macrohistory database
The Jordà-Schularick-Taylor Macrohistory Database wins the Engerman-Goldin Prize awarded by the Economic History Association. The prize is awarded for creating, compiling, and sharing data and information with scholars.
15.09.2022 | New Members
HANNA SCHWANK AND MINTRA DWARKASING JOIn the MACROFINANCE & MACROHISTORY LAB
We are very happy to welcome Hanna Schwank as an Assistant Professor and Mintra Dwarkasing as a Research Fellow at the MacroFinance & MacroHistory Lab.
19.07.2022 | EER
NEW PUBLICATION
Martin Dohmen published his paper "Freedom of enterprise and economic development in the German industrial take-off" in the European Economic Review.
13.07.2022 | VoxTalks Economics
causes and costs of populism
Across Europe and beyond, populist movements have recently flourished. What does history teach us about the economic impact of populism - and is our taste for populists a bug or a feature of democracy?
A new episode of the VoxTalks Economics was recorded at this year's CEPR Paris Symposium, where Tim Phillips talked to Moritz Schularick and Massimo Morelli (Bocconi University).
09.12.2021 | Leibniz Prize
Moritz Schularick wins Leibniz prize
Moritz Schularick wins the most important research funding award in Germany. The Leibniz
Prize recognizes his outstanding research achievements in the field of economics. In particular, the way he connects macroeconomics with economic history, his insights into the causes
of financial crises and his research on the historical development of wealth distribution.
01.03.2021 | APHES Award
APHES Award for RiCardo Duque Gabriel
Ricardo Duque Gabriel received the APHES Award for his paper “Monetary Policy and the Wage Inflation-Unemployment Tradeoff”. This award is for the best communication of a young researcher presented at the annual meeting of the Portuguese Association of Economic and Social History.
01.06.2021 | New Member
Chi HYUN KIM JOINS MACROFINANCE & MACROHISTORY LAB
We are very happy to welcome Chi Hyun Kim as a new Post-Doctoral Researcher at the MacroFinance and MacroHistory Lab!
01.03.2021 | ORA Grant
International Grant to study REGIONAL income inequality
The project, entitled “Linking National and Regional Income Inequality: Cross-Country Data Harmonization and Analysis", aims to measure and analyze the evolution of regional and national income inequality from a consistent cross-country perspective.
16.02.2021 | VoxEU
The cost of populism: Evidence from History
The rise of populism in the past two decades has motivated much work on its drivers, but less is known about its economic and political consequences. This column uses a comprehensive cross-country database on populism dating back to 1900 to offer a historical, long-run perspective. It shows that (1) populism has a long history and is serial in nature – if countries have been governed by a populist once, they are much more likely to see another populist coming to office in the future; (2) populist leadership is economically costly, with a notable long-run decline in consumption and output; and (3) populism is politically disruptive, fostering instability and institutional decay. The analysis suggests that populism is here to stay.