On December 9th, the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), the German Research Foundation, announced the 2022 laureates of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. Moritz SCHULARICK, Professor at Sciences Po and at the University of Bonn, is one of the 10 recipients of the most prestigious research award in Germany.

The DFG is the self-governing organisation for science and research in Germany. It serves all branches of science and the humanities. Its members include German research universities, non-university research institutions, scientific associations and the Academies of Science and the Humanities. Its main mission – equivalent to that of the French Agence nationale de recherche (ANR) - is to select the best projects by researchers at universities and research institutions on a competitive basis and to finance these projects.

Since 1986 the DFG awards every year the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize to up to ten scientists from all branches - humanities and social sciences, natural sciences, and life sciences. The Leibniz Prize is awarded for outstanding work in research and is accompanied by a substantial grant of up to 2,5 million euros for each laureate who is free to use it as she or he wishes for future research. Previously ten recipients of the Leibniz Prize have gone on to receive a Nobel Prize.

For the 2022 Prize, Moritz SCHULARICK was selected by the Main Committee of the DFG for his outstanding research achievements in the field of economics. He is cited in particular by the DFG for (re)placing economic history at the heart of macroeconomics and for his insights into the causes of financial crises and the historical development of the distribution of wealth.

• While most economists seemed largely unprepared for the financial crisis of 2008, Moritz Schularick was prompt to demonstrate that financial crises regularly follow phases of strong growth and thus develop a more fundamental understanding of crisis dynamics that can help anticipate and mitigate future financial crises.
• More recently, Moritz Schularick has focused his research on the causes of social inequality. To this end, he analysed the development of returns on capital. 

Overall, his work has contributed significantly to a better understanding of the central problems we are currently facing and is taken up in many economic and socio-political debates. 

Moritz SCHULARICK joined the Department this year as Professor of Economics at Sciences Po. He is also the Director of the MacroFinance Lab, and a Principal Investigator in the DFG-Excellence Cluster ECONtribute at the University of Bonn. He is an elected Member of the Academy of Sciences of Berlin and a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Among his editorial duties, he is the Managing Editor of Economic Policy.

In 2018, he already received the Gossen-Prize of the German Economic Association that is awarded every year to honour a German-speaking economist whose work has gained international renown.

Congratulations to Moritz SCHULARICK !

To learn more about Moritz SCHULARICK, consult his website
Read the DFG’s press release announcing the 2022 laureates of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (in German)