Uwe Sunde is Professor of Economics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU), where he holds the Chair of Population Economics. His research spans long-term development, political economy, labor and population economics, and behavioral economics. He is also a Research Professor at the ifo Center for Labour and Demographic Economics and affiliated with the German Institute for Demographic Research, CEPR London, CESifo, DIW Berlin, IZA, and RWBerlin.

Born in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, Sunde studied economics at LMU and the University of Warwick, earning his diploma in 1998. He completed his Ph.D. in 2003 through the European Doctoral Program at the University of Bonn and Universitat Pompeu Fabra. After postdoctoral work at IZA and the Bonn Graduate School of Economics, he became Professor of Macroeconomics and Director of the Swiss Institute for Empirical Economic Research at the University of St. Gallen before returning to LMU in 2012.

Sunde’s contributions to economics have been recognized with the Gossen Prize (2015), membership in the Academia Europaea (2019), and an honorary doctorate from the University of Lucerne (2023). He serves on editorial boards of leading journals including the Journal of Population Economics and Journal of the Economics of Aging, and has held leadership roles in the German Economic Association and the European Association of Labour Economists.

His empirical work has shaped understanding of risk and time preferences, reciprocity, and human capital formation. His theoretical work has contributed to a better understanding of patterns of long-run development, and the importance of demographic and institutional factors. According to IDEAS/RePEc, Sunde ranks among the top 1% of most-cited economists worldwide.