13.05.2022

The School of Business and Economics bids farewell to Professor Kohler

On May 6, 2022, Professor Wilhelm Kohler gave his farewell lecture at the University of Tübingen. He had followed the call to Tübingen in 2004, after stations in Innsbruck, Essen and Linz.

Over the past 20 years, Willi Kohler has had a decisive influence on the intellectual development of the School and established Tübingen as a location for top-level research in the field of international economics.

In front of an audience of more than 100, he now presented new research results on the question "What does the EU internal market do for labor?" in the university's Audimax. Within the framework of a model-based experiment, he quantified the efficiency gains that result from complete labor mobility in the EU single market. These turn out to be considerable, with a permanent increase in GDP of about 5%. This provides a benchmark for evaluating the existing barriers that restrict mobility to date. In his laudation, the School's spokesman Professor Gernot Müller outlined the work of Willi Kohler, not least through his numerous and globally very successful students. 

Professor Kohler continues to lead - together with Bernhard Boockmann - the Institute for Applied Economic Research at the University of Tübingen as director and remains associated with the School of Business and Economics within the framework of ongoing research projects.