Willi Semmler


Willi Semmler is a German born American economist who currently teaches at The New School in New York.

Academic career

Willi Semmler studied at the University of Munich, Technical University of Berlin and Free University of Berlin. He has a PHD and a Habilitation from the Free University of Berlin. He began his teaching career at the University of Berlin, was a Post-Doc at Columbia University, funded by the American Council of Learned Society, taught at the American University, Washington, D.C., and the University of Bielefeld,. He is currently the Henry Arnhold Professor of International Cooperation and Development at the New School for Social Research, The New School, New York. He was research fellow at the ZEW Mannheim and is Senior Researcher at the IIASA, Laxenburg, Austria. He was visitor at the CEPREMAP, Paris, Stanford University, and Japanese Universities.

Theoretical contributions

Semmler's dissertation was on Multisector Growth Theory. His research topics include Classical Economic Dynamics, Business Cycles, Macroeconomic Dynamics, Economic Growth, Global Growth, Environment, and Resources, Macroeconomics and Finance, Financial Economics, the Economics of Climate Change, Empirical Macroeconomics and Regime Switching Models, and Numerical Methods in Economics.

Applied work

US and EU macroeconomics, and monetary and fiscal policy, disparities in income and wealth distribution, dynamic portfolio decisions, financing climate policies, climate policies and green jobs, empirics of nonrenewable and renewable energy, and economic comments in Spiegel Online, see External Links. Semmler’s policy research has also been featured in working paper series of the World Bank, IMF, ECB, and ILO.

Awards and Grants

Grant from the German Science Foundation, on Macroeconomics and Inequality, August 2015 – 2016
Grant from the German Science Foundation jointly with Stephan Klasen, on Infrastructure against Climate Risk, August 2012 – 2013, extension 2015-2016
Thyssen Foundation grant for a two year speaker series on Global Warming and Renewable Energy, August 2012-August 2014, extension 2015-2020
One year grant from the Center for European Economics Research, Mannheim, on a research project on Financial Stress and Economic Dynamics: Asymmetries within and Across European Countries, June 2012-June 2013
Fulbright Professorship, University of Economics, Vienna, 2012
Grant from the Walker Foundation on "The Economics of Global Warming II: Renewable Energy", September 2011

Publications