He received his PhD from the University of Bonn in 2006, and previously held positions at the University of Pennsylvania, Oxford, the London School of Economics, the University of Edinburgh and the European University Institute. He is a fellow of the Econometrics Society and the European Economic Association, and has been managing editor and chairman of the Review of Economic Studies.
His research focuses on the consequences of search frictions in labor markets, in particular regarding wage setting and assignment of workers to jobs. He has also worked on epidemics and how individuals change their behavior in response to diseases and policies, applied both to HIV and Covid-19. His papers have been published in the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, and the Quarterly Journal of Economics, among others.
His research is currently supported by an ERC consolidator grant and has previous been funded by an ERC starting grant, by the ESRC, and by the NSF.