Prof. Dr. Marco Runkel, PhD

Kantian Ethics and Economic Policy

During his stay in Munich, Marco Runkel will deliver three CES Lectures on “Economic Approaches to Kant’s Categorical Imperative”, in which he will give a selective survey of theoretical frameworks that have been developed in the economic literature with the aim of mapping Kantian morality. While visiting CES, he will expand his current research on this topic. Together with Andreas Haufler from LMU, for instance, he will seek to connect Kantian ethics with questions of international tax competition and taxation of multinational enterprises. This is a highly policy relevant issue, since we observe moral attitudes of citizen and voters not only in connection with climate change, but also when it comes to the negative consequence of profit shifting by multinational enterprises. Hence, it is important to address the impact of moral behavior by individuals on the shape and efficiency of the international tax policy chosen by national governments.

Beside the fields addressed in his PhD thesis and habilitation – environmental economics; tax competition and taxation of multinational enterprises – his research interests encompass sports economics and behavioral public economics. From a methodological point of view, he mainly employs theoretical microeconomic modeling, partially augmented by empirical calibrations. He has published both in top general interest journals like the American Economic Review and in leading field journals like the Journal of Public Economics.

Marco Runkel is head of the Chair in Public and Health Economics at the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin. He did his PhD 2002 at the University of Siegen on environmental economics and his habilitation 2008 at LMU (LMU) Munich on tax competition and taxation of multinational enterprises. After being a Professor in Public Economics at the Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg from 2008 to 2011, he moved to his present affiliation at TU Berlin.