Uwe Sunde

A native of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Uwe Sunde spent his undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and University of Warwick (as Erasmus exchange), and earned a diploma in economics in 1998. Thereafter, he participated in the European Doctoral Program at the Pompeu Fabra University and University of Bonn, receiving his Ph.D. from the latter in 2003.

After earning his Ph.D., Sunde worked as a research associate and later as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) and the Bonn Graduate School of Economics (2003–2008), at the end of which he earned his habilitation from the University of Bonn. He then moved to the University of St. Gallen, where he held the positions of Professor of Macroeconomics and Director of the Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research (SEW-HSG). Having returned to Germany in 2012, Uwe Sunde has been a professor of economics at the LMU ever since then. In parallel, Sunde is affiliated with the ifo Center for Labour and Demographic Economics and the DIW Berlin as a research professor and with the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and IZA as a research fellow.

In terms of professional activities, he is member of the Councils for Population Economics, for Macroeconomics and for Organization Economics within the German Economic Association, on whose Extended Board he sat in 2015/16, chairs the Survey Committee of the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), and participates in the selection of the recipients of the Humboldt Research Awards within the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Moreover, he performs editorial duties for the academic journals [https://link.springer.com/journal/148 Journal of Population Economics] and [https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/the-journal-of-the-economics-of-ageing Journal of the Economics of Aging] and has edited the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization as well as Applied Economics Quarterly in the past. Finally, he has also been in the past a member of the Executive Board of the European Association of Labour Economists (EALE), an extramural fellow at the University of Maastricht, and a coordinator of IZA's Guest and Visitors Programme.[http://www.popecon.econ.uni-muenchen.de/personen/professoren/sunde/cv_sunde_1801.pdf Curriculum vitae of Uwe Sunde on the website of the LMU (status: January 2018). Retrieved March 18th, 2018.]

Uwe Sunde's research interests include long-term development and human capital formation, labour economics, population economics, and behavioural economics. According to IDEAS/RePEc, Sunde ranks among the top 2% of highest cited economists worldwide.[https://ideas.repec.org/top/top.person.all.html#psu51 Ranking of economists registered on IDEAS/RePEc. Retrieved March 18th, 2018.]

One major area of Sunde's research concerns individuals' risk attitudes, which he has extensively explored with Armin Falk, Thomas Dohmen and David Huffman. Together with Holger Bonin, they find that risk averse individuals sort themselves into occupations with low earnings risk, independently of where they live (in Germany), what gender they are or what their previous labour market experience was.{{Cite journal |last1=Bonin |first1=Holger |last2=Dohmen |first2=Thomas |last3=Falk |first3=Armin |last4=Huffman |first4=David |last5=Sunde |first5=Uwe |date=2007 |title=Cross-sectional earnings risk and occupational sorting: The role of risk attitudes |url=https://ideas.repec.org//a/eee/labeco/v14y2007i6p926-937.html |journal=Labour Economics |language=en |volume=14 |issue=6 |pages=926–937|doi=10.1016/j.labeco.2007.06.007 |hdl=10419/33544 |hdl-access=free }} They also find that lower cognitive ability is associated with greater risk aversion and more pronounced impatience.{{Cite journal |last1=Dohmen |first1=Thomas |last2=Falk |first2=Armin |last3=Huffman |first3=David |last4=Sunde |first4=Uwe |date=2010 |title=Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability? |url=https://ideas.repec.org//a/aea/aecrev/v100y2010i3p1238-60.html |journal=American Economic Review |language=en |volume=100 |issue=3 |pages=1238–1260|doi=10.1257/aer.100.3.1238 |hdl=10419/26665 |hdl-access=free }} Another accomplishment of their research in cooperation with David A. Jaeger and Holger Bonin has been to provide direct evidence for the hypothesis that individuals who are less risk averse are more likely to migrate.{{Cite journal |last1=Jaeger |first1=David A. |last2=Dohmen |first2=Thomas |last3=Falk |first3=Armin |last4=Huffman |first4=David |last5=Sunde |first5=Uwe |last6=Bonin |first6=Holger |date=2010 |title=Direct Evidence on Risk Attitudes and Migration |url=https://ideas.repec.org//a/tpr/restat/v92y2010i3p684-689.html |journal=The Review of Economics and Statistics |language=en |volume=92 |issue=3 |pages=684–689|doi=10.1162/REST_a_00020 |hdl=10419/295283 |hdl-access=free }}

In their two most seminal contributions, they explore the measurement, determinants and behavioural consequences of individual risk attitudes (with Jürgen Schupp and Gert Wagner) as well as the transmission of risk and trust attitudes across generations. In the former, they find that asking individuals to rate their "general" willingness to take risk on a scale from 1 to 10 yields the best all-round predictor of risky behaviour, which significantly depends on individuals' gender, age, height and parental background.{{Cite journal |last1=Dohmen |first1=Thomas |last2=Falk |first2=Armin |last3=Huffman |first3=David |last4=Sunde |first4=Uwe |last5=Schupp |first5=Jürgen |last6=Wagner |first6=Gert G. |date=2011 |title=Individual Risk Attitudes: Measurement, Determinants, And Behavioral Consequences |url=https://ideas.repec.org//a/bla/jeurec/v9y2011i3p522-550.html |journal=Journal of the European Economic Association |language=en |volume=9 |issue=3 |pages=522–550|doi=10.1111/j.1542-4774.2011.01015.x }} In the latter, they find that the transmission across others of risk and trust attitudes depends on (i) the transmission of attitudes from parents to children, (ii) the attitudes prevailing in the local environment, and individuals' tendency to mate with partners with similar attitudes. Additionally, the transmission process is strongly affected by socialization, which itself is reinforced by parental characteristics and aspects of family structure.{{Cite journal |last1=Dohmen |first1=Thomas |last2=Falk |first2=Armin |last3=Huffman |first3=David |last4=Sunde |first4=Uwe |date=2012 |title=The Intergenerational Transmission of Risk and Trust Attitudes |url=https://ideas.repec.org//a/oup/restud/v79y2012i2p645-677.html |journal=The Review of Economic Studies |language=en |volume=79 |issue=2 |pages=645–677 |doi=10.1093/restud/rdr027 |hdl-access=free |hdl=10419/26352}} In subsequent work together with Anke Becker and Benjamin Enke, they elicited risk attitudes, time preferences and different measures of prosociality among representative samples in 76 countries.Armin Falk, Anke Becker, Thomas Dohmen, Benjamin Enke, David Huffman, Uwe Sunde (2018): “Global Evidence on Economic Preferences” ,Quarterly Journal of Economics, 133(4), 1645–1692, doi: https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy013.

In parallel, Sunde, Falk and Dohmen have also researched other aspects of behavioural economics, including neuroeconomics and reciprocity. In neuroeconomics, together with Klaus Fliessbach, Christian E. Elger and Bernd Weber, they find that social comparison affects reward-related brain activity in the human ventral striatum.{{cite journal | url=https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1145876 | doi=10.1126/science.1145876 | title=Social Comparison Affects Reward-Related Brain Activity in the Human Ventral Striatum | date=2007 | last1=Fliessbach | first1=K. | last2=Weber | first2=B. | last3=Trautner | first3=P. | last4=Dohmen | first4=T. | last5=Sunde | first5=U. | last6=Elger | first6=C. E. | last7=Falk | first7=A. | journal=Science | volume=318 | issue=5854 | pages=1305–1308 | pmid=18033886 | bibcode=2007Sci...318.1305F }} Furthermore, this activation in the ventral striatum increases in absolute income and - for a given level of absolute income - decreases in lower relative income in both men and women. Similarly, they find that the mere outperforming of the other subject positively affects this reward-related brain area.{{Cite journal |last1=Dohmen |first1=Thomas |last2=Falk |first2=Armin |last3=Fliessbach |first3=Klaus |last4=Sunde |first4=Uwe |last5=Weber |first5=Bernd |date=2011 |title=Relative versus absolute income, joy of winning, and gender: Brain imaging evidence |url=https://ideas.repec.org//a/eee/pubeco/v95y2011i3-4p279-285.html |journal=Journal of Public Economics |language=en |volume=95 |issue=3–4 |pages=279–285|doi=10.1016/j.jpubeco.2010.11.025 |url-access=subscription }} In their research on reciprocity, Sunde, Dohmen, Falk and Huffman find that most people say that they will respond in kind to positive or negative actions, though with wide differences in the degree of trust and reciprocity. Whereas trust and negative reciprocity are negatively correlated, trust and positive reciprocity are only weakly correlated, with women and the elderly having on average stronger positive and weaker negative reciprocal tendencies.{{cite journal | url=https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1465-7295.2007.00082.x | doi=10.1111/j.1465-7295.2007.00082.x | title=Representative Trust and Reciprocity: Prevalence and Determinants | date=2008 | last1=Dohmen | first1=Thomas | last2=Falk | first2=Armin | last3=Huffman | first3=David | last4=Sunde | first4=UWE | journal=Economic Inquiry | volume=46 | pages=84–90 }} Finally, in another study, they find evidence that reciprocity affects labour market outcomes, with positive reciprocity being associated with higher wages and higher work effort, whereas negative reciprocity is correlated with reduced effort and an increased likelihood of being unemployed.{{Cite journal |last1=Dohmen |first1=Thomas |last2=Falk |first2=Armin |last3=Huffman |first3=David |last4=Sunde |first4=Uwe |date=2009 |title=Homo Reciprocans: Survey Evidence on Behavioural Outcomes |url=https://ideas.repec.org//a/ecj/econjl/v119y2009i536p592-612.html |journal=Economic Journal |language=en |volume=119 |issue=536 |pages=592–612|doi=10.1111/j.1468-0297.2008.02242.x }}

Together with Matteo Cervellati, Uwe Sunde has developed a theory of economic development based on the idea of a positive feedback loop between longevity and human capital that is triggered by endogenous skill-biased technological change. Therein, skill-biased technological change helps to increase the time over which individuals reap returns on their human capital by expanding longevity and thus allows to compensate for the initially prohibitively high cost of human capital formation. As a result, an economy transitions from underdevelopment to sustained growth.{{Cite journal |last1=Cervellati |first1=Matteo |last2=Sunde |first2=Uwe |date=2005 |title=Human Capital Formation, Life Expectancy, and the Process of Development |url=https://ideas.repec.org//a/aea/aecrev/v95y2005i5p1653-1672.html |journal=American Economic Review |language=en |volume=95 |issue=5 |pages=1653–1672|doi=10.1257/000282805775014380 |pmid=29125727 }} Building upon this theory, Sunde and Cervellati further explore how life expectancy affects economic growth in the situation of a demographic transition{{Cite journal |last1=Cervellati |first1=Matteo |last2=Sunde |first2=Uwe |date=2011 |title=Life expectancy and economic growth: the role of the demographic transition |url=https://ideas.repec.org//a/kap/jecgro/v16y2011i2p99-133.html |journal=Journal of Economic Growth |language=en |volume=16 |issue=2 |pages=99–133|doi=10.1007/s10887-011-9065-2 |hdl=10419/35489 |hdl-access=free }} and how delays in demographic development explain comparative development across the world.Matteo Cervellati, Uwe Sunde (2015): “The Economic and Demographic Transition, Mortality, and Comparative Development", American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, 7(3), 189-225, [https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20130170 doi:10.1257/mac.2013017] In related work, they investigate the role of the rise in life expectancy for the secular expansion of education and the secular decline in lifetime labor supply.Matteo Cervellati, Uwe Sunde (2013): “Life Expectancy, Schooling, and Lifetime Labor Supply: Theory and Evidence Revisited”, Econometrica 81(5), 2055-2086, doi: https://doi.org/10.3982/ECTA11169.

In related work, Uwe Sunde has investigated the mechanisms of institutional dynamics and democratization,Matteo Cervellati, Piergiuseppe Fortunato, Uwe Sunde (2008): “Hobbes to Rousseau: Inequality, Institutions and Development”, Economic Journal, 118(531), 1354-1384. doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0297.2008.02173.xFlorian Jung; Uwe Sunde (2014): “Income, Inequality, and the Stability of Democracy: Another Look at the Lipset Hypothesis”, European Journal of Political Economy, 35, 52-74, doi:10.1016/j.ejpoleco.2014.03.004 as well as the determinants of democratic attitudes.Marie Lechler; Uwe Sunde (2019): “Individual Life Horizon Influences Attitudes Toward Democracy”American Political Science Review, 113(3), 860-867. doi: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055419000200

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• [http://www.popecon.econ.uni-muenchen.de/personen/professoren/sunde/index.html Webpage of Uwe Sunde on the website of the LMU]
• [https://sites.google.com/view/uwesunde/home Personal website]
• [https://www.cesifo-group.de/ifoHome/CESifo-Group/ifo/ifo-Forschungsprofessoren/_ifocv_sunde_u.html Profile of Uwe Sunde on the website of the CESifo Group]

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Category:1973 births

Category:People from Garmisch-Partenkirchen

Category:German economists

Category:Labor economists

Category:Behavioral economists

Category:Academic staff of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich

Category:Alumni of the University of Warwick

Category:Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich alumni

Category:Pompeu Fabra University alumni

Category:University of Bonn alumni

Category:Living people

Category:Members of Academia Europaea