CV

Profile

I’m a professor of economics at the Department of Economics at Copenhagen Business School (CBS). I'm also director of the CBS-based Pension Research Centre (PeRCent), a non-resident fellow at Bruegel, the Brussels-based economic think tank, and I'm a member of the Scientific Council of the Dutch Network for Studies on Pensions, Aging and Retirement (Netspar) .  

Before joining CBS, I held positions at the University of Copenhagen and the University of Southern Denmark. I have also served as head of the Division of Economic Analysis within the Ministry of Industry, Business and Financial Affairs in Denmark. Throughout, I've had a number of "outside activities" within my areas of expertise.

Academia hasn't always been my career anchor. In fact, at a young age I went to agricultural college. My goal was to become an owner-occupier, owning and working at my own farm after a generational take-over of my parents' farm in Jutland. However, I changed my plans: I wanted to become an economist. You can read more about what motivated me here.

I then went to high school, with a specialization in mathematics and physics. Later I graduated with a cand. oecon. degree (MSc in Economics and Management) from the University of Aarhus, an MA (Econ) degree from the University of Manchester, and I earned my PhD (Econ) degree from the London Business School.

Since the early days, international macroeconomics has been my key area of interest. However, more recently I have also become interested in the design and performance of the welfare state. Indeed, my most recent work relates to the public pension system and the effects of occupational pension schemes on public finances and firm productivity.