Harald Uhlig


Harald Uhlig is a German economist and the Bruce Allen and Barbara Ritzenthaler Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago, where he was the Chairman of the Department of Economics from 2009 to 2012.

Education

Uhlig received his Diplom in mathematics from the Technical University of Berlin in 1985. He went on to earn a doctoral degree in economics at the University of Minnesota in 1990. His Ph.D. thesis, titled "Costly Information Acquisition, Stock Prices and Neoclassical Growth", was supervised by Christopher A. Sims.

Career

Uhlig has held positions at Princeton University, 1990–1994, Tilburg University, 1994–2000 and Humboldt University of Berlin, 2000–2007. He has also been a consultant for both the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and the European Central Bank.
Uhlig was co-editor of Econometrica from 2006 to 2010. He became a co-editor of the Journal of Political Economy in 2012.

Awards and distinctions

In June 2020, using Twitter, Uhlig compared people who supported defunding the police to "flat-earthers and creationists", causing controversy, covered in the New York Times. Since the publication, unsubstantiated allegations of discriminatory conduct have resurfaced. He was temporarily placed on leave as editor at the Journal of Political Economy "pending a determination of the Board as to whether it would be appropriate for him to continue in that role given recent accusations of discriminatory conduct in a University classroom setting." He has since been reinstated after a finding that "there is not a basis for a further investigation or disciplinary proceeding." His ties to the Chicago Federal Reserve, however, remain severed.

Selected publications