The Verein für Socialpolitik (VfS) is to confer the 2026 Carl Menger Award on economist Benjamin Born. The award, which is endowed with EUR 20,000, will be presented by VfS Chair Klaus M. Schmidt on Monday, 14 September 2026, 6.30 pm, at the VfS Annual Conference in Innsbruck.

Benjamin Born is Professor of Macroeconomics at the University of Bonn and Research Director at the ifo Institute. Prior to this, he taught and conducted research at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management as well as at the Universities of Bonn and Mannheim. He is one of the most internationally visible German macroeconomists of his generation. His research, which includes work on business cycles as well as monetary and fiscal policy, combines fundamental macroeconomic analysis with high economic policy relevance. He publishes regularly in leading international journals, including American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, Economic Journal and Journal of Monetary Economics.

Born is a Research Fellow at CEPR and CESifo and advises, among others, the European Central Bank and the European Commission. He is also a member of the European Parliament's Expert Group on Monetary Policy and of the CEPR-EABCN Euro Area Business Cycle Dating Committee.

'Benjamin Born's research is making an important contribution to the development of modern macroeconomics and to the empirical analysis of monetary, fiscal and economic policy,' says VfS Chair Klaus M. Schmidt. 'This is exactly what the Carl Menger Award recognises: research that sets international standards while at the same time providing answers to pressing economic policy questions.'

The Carl Menger Award is jointly sponsored by the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and the Swiss National Bank and is presented every two years for innovative international research in monetary macroeconomics and monetary policy. During the award process, particular consideration is given to publications in respected international journals as well as to the response of the academic community, notably in the form of citations.

Press contact

Karolin von Normann, tel.: +49 (0)30 20 45 96 01, email: karolin.normann@socialpolitik.org