Sarah Necker Heads New ifo Center for Social Market Economy in Fürth, Germany
Sarah Necker has been appointed Director of the new Ludwig Erhard ifo Research Center for Social Market Economy and Institutional Economics, a branch of the ifo Institute which will be located in Fürth. The 40-year-old economist will begin her duties on June 3, 2022. The new ifo Center is concerned with further developing the guiding principle of the social market economy. The appointment is linked to a professorship in economics at Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU).
“We want to study what reforms are needed to tackle new challenges, such as demographic change, digitalization, climate change, and questions relating to the fairness of distribution in social market economies,” says Sarah Neckar, the new Director of the Ludwig Erhard ifo Center for Social Market Economy and Institutional Economics. The new center will cooperate closely with the ifo Centers in Munich, the Ludwig Erhard Zentrum (LEZ) in Fürth, and the FAU.
“With Sarah Necker heading the center, the ifo Institute has gained an excellent scholar whose research applies innovative microeconomic and behavioral economic methods to the central economic policy issues of our time. She has a strong network and is the ideal person to combine economic research and the current economic policy debate on the future of the social market economy,” says ifo President Clemens Fuest.
“The research center gives the Ludwig Erhard Zentrum an important third pillar in addition to its event center and the large permanent exhibition, which was nominated for the European Museum Award in 2022. I’m delighted that the task of establishing and leading the research center is in the hands of Sarah Necker, an excellent young economist,” says Evi Kurz, Chairwoman of the Board of Trustees of the LEZ’s sponsoring foundation, Stiftung Ludwig-Erhard-Haus.
Necker studied economics at Stellenbosch University in South Africa and at the University of Marburg in Germany. She received her doctorate and conducted research at Heidelberg University and the University of Freiburg. Most recently, she was an Executive Research Associate at the Walter Eucken Institut in Freiburg. Her interests lie in applied microeconomics, and her research explores topics such as the analysis of tax evasion and behavior in competition.
