Growing up in East Germany, next to the so-called “death strip” with a heavily guarded double fence and minefields, I have always wondered who I would have been had I been born 2km to the West, sparking my curiosity about the impact of cultures and institutions on behavior. 

I’m a behavioral economist and psychologist who studies how incentives and controls affect individual motivation and the influence of culture and institutions on behavior. My recent interest is in how these mechanisms can be applied to public health and climate policies. At SFI, I’m drawing on the complexity sciences to better understand how the interaction between institutions and people’s preferences can be taken into account when designing public policies.

I hold a postgraduate degree in psychology. My PhD dissertation in economics at the Max Planck Institute for Economics in Jena received the Heinz Sauermann Prize of the GfeW (German Association for Experimental Economic Research), I received the State Prize for Courageous Science for my research and public engagement with respect to covid policies, and the Science Prize of the Messmer Foundation for my current behavioral research on climate policies.

Three of my recent papers on how anti-COVID-19 policies change citizens’ preferences and beliefs appeared in PNAS. I have also published in The Economic Journal, Experimental Economics, The Journal of Neuroscience, and Human Brain Mapping. My commentaries on public policy have appeared in the Washington Post, Nature News Feature, Science Insider, The Guardian, Times of India, Newsweek Japan, Radio France, VoxEU, LSE COVID-19 blog, and many other media outlets around the world.