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Guntram B. Wolff

Bruegel Senior fellow

Guntram Wolff is a Senior fellow at Bruegel. He is also a Professor of Economics at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB). 

From 2022-2024, he was the Director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP) and from 2013-22 the director of Bruegel. Over his career, he has contributed to research on European political economy, climate policy, geoeconomics, macroeconomics and foreign affairs. His work was published in academic journals such as Nature, Science, Research Policy, Energy Policy, Climate Policy, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Banking and Finance. His co-authored book “The macroeconomics of decarbonization” is published in Cambridge University Press.

An experienced public adviser, he has been testifying twice a year since 2013 to the informal European finance ministers’ and central bank governors’ ECOFIN Council meeting on a large variety of topics. He also regularly testifies to the European Parliament, the Bundestag and speaks to corporate boards. In 2020, Business Insider ranked him one of the 28 most influential “power players” in Europe. From 2012-16, he was a member of the French prime minister’s Conseil d’Analyse Economique. In 2018, then IMF managing director Christine Lagarde appointed him to the external advisory group on surveillance to review the Fund’s priorities. In 2021, he was appointed member and co-director to the G20 High level independent panel on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response under the co-chairs Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Lawrence H. Summers and Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. From 2013-22, he was an advisor to the Mastercard Centre for Inclusive Growth. He is a member of the Bulgarian Council of Economic Analysis, the European Council on Foreign Affairs and advisory board of Elcano. He is also a fellow at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Guntram joined Bruegel from the European Commission, where he worked on the macroeconomics of the euro area and the reform of euro area governance. Prior to joining the Commission, he worked in the research department at the Bundesbank, which he joined after completing his PhD in economics at the University of Bonn. He also worked as an external adviser to the International Monetary Fund. He is fluent in German, English, and French. His work is regularly published and cited in leading media. 

Disclosure of interests

Declaration of interests 2024

Declaration of interests 2021

Declaration of interests 2020

Declaration of interests 2019

Declaration of interests 2018

Declaration of interests 2017

Declaration of interests 2016

Declaration of interests 2015

Declaration of interests 2014

Declaration of interests 2013

Declaration of interests 2012

Featured work

Working paper

Greeniums in sovereign bond markets

In this paper, we analyse whether green sovereign bonds are systematically priced differently to conventional sovereign bonds in the secondary markets

Monika De Ridder (Grzegorczyk) and Guntram B. Wolff
Opinion piece

Ukraine needs external financial assistance now

Planning Ukraine’s reconstruction tomorrow is important but meeting its financial needs today is more pressing and requires urgent action.

Arancha González Laya, Gabriel Felbermayr, Moritz Schularick, Shahin Vallée and Guntram B. Wolff
Opinion piece

The EU without Russian oil and gas

The EU and the West need to acknowledge and accept the fact that European liberal democracy is being defended in Ukraine – a clearer message to Putin

Guntram B. Wolff
External publication

The Kremlin’s gas wars

How Europe can protect itself from Russian blackmail.

Georg Zachmann, Guntram B. Wolff, Simone Tagliapietra and Niclas Poitiers
Book

Greening Europe’s post-COVID-19 recovery

This Blueprint includes some of the Group’s most prominent voices on the different aspects of the multidimensional issue of green recovery.

Jean Pisani-Ferry, Georg Zachmann, Guntram B. Wolff, Laurence Boone, Simone Tagliapietra, Ottmar Edenhofer, Thomas Wieser, Ian Parry, Antoine Dechezleprêtre, Klaas Lenaerts, Robert Stavins, Mirjam Kosch, Michael Pahle, Laurence Tubiana, Sabine Mauderer and Tomasz Koźluk
Book

Instruments of a strategic foreign economic policy

Study for the German Federal Foreign Office produced by Bruegel, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and DIW Berlin.

Georg Zachmann, Guntram B. Wolff, Marcel Fratzscher, Kerstin Bernoth, Gabriel Felbermayr, Niclas Poitiers, Alexander Sandkamp, Mia Hoffmann, Pauline Weil, Katrin Kamin, Malte Rieth, Jacqueline Dombrowski, Sebastian Horn and Karsten Neuhoff
External publication

A Global Deal for Our Pandemic Age

Report of the G20 High Level Independent Panel on Financing the Global Commons for Pandemic Preparedness and Response.

Lucrezia Reichlin, Guntram B. Wolff, Jean-Claude Trichet, Min ZHU, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, Ana Botin, Masood Ahmed, Vera Songwe, Jeremy Farrar, Lawrence H. Summers, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Jacob Frenkel, Rebeca Grynspan, Naoko Ishii, Michael Kremer, Kira Mazumdar-Shaw, Luis Alberto Moreno, John-Arne Røttingen, Mark Suzman, Tidjane Thiam, Ngaire Woods and Victor Dzau
Event

The state strikes back

COVID-19 has caused a resurgence of the role of the state. What role should state owned firms and banks play and how can their management be improved?

External publication

Employment and COVID-19

Testimony before the Economic Affairs Committee at the House of Lords, British Parliament on Employment and COVID-19.

Guntram B. Wolff
Event

Reopening: Brussels

As European borders reopen, we conducted a “temperature reading” of diverse actors about the local impact of the Covid-19 response.

Opinion piece

Disease, like poverty, does not stay at home

To fight the Covid-19 pandemic, best practice responses in Africa need to be implemented around international collaboration. These include the need to

Guntram B. Wolff, Karim El Aynaoui, Yonas Adeto, Thomas Gomart, Paolo Magri, Greg Mills and Karin Von Hippel
Event

Bruegel Annual Meetings 2019

Bruegel's 2019 Annual Meetings will be held on 4-5 September and feature the launch of Bruegel's Memos to the New European Commission.