Short CV

Tobias Thomas is an economist focusing on economic policy, competitiveness and productivity growth in Europe. He combines academic research with leadership experience in economic policy institutions, research institutes and international policy bodies. Thomas is Professor of Economics at the Graz Schumpeter Centre at the University of Graz and Vice Chair of the Austrian Productivity Board, which serves as Austria’s Council of Economic Advisors on productivity and competitiveness.

From 2020 to 2025 he served as Director General of Statistics Austria, leading the national statistical office with around 850 employees and a budget of roughly €100 million. During his term, the Austrian Micro Data Center (AMDC) was established as a new research data infrastructure and Statistics Austria achieved excellent results in the peer review of the European Statistical System. In addition, Austria was elected by the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) for the first time after more than four decades.

Previously, Thomas was Director of the economic research institute EcoAustria in Vienna, where policy-oriented research and advisory projects for federal ministries, regional governments and the European Commission were significantly expanded. Earlier positions include Director of Economic Policy and Director of European Economic Policy at the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry (DIHK) in Berlin and Brussels, as well as Research Director of an international media analysis institute headquartered in Zurich with offices in Hanoi, New York and Pretoria. Thomas is also founder of the Berlin-based policy platform Econwatch, which facilitates the transfer of economic research into policymaking and public debate.

Thomas studied economics at the University of Bonn and the Technical University of Berlin. He received his doctorate (summa cum laude) and habilitation from Helmut-Schmidt-University in Hamburg. He was a visiting scholar at Columbia University in New York at the invitation of Nobel laureate Joseph E. Stiglitz and at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich.

His academic work has been published in journals including the European Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, and Constitutional Political Economy. His research focuses on economic policy, competitiveness, public finances, media impact and the political economy of reforms.

Thomas has served on numerous advisory bodies, including the Austrian Pension Commission, the Commission “Future of Statistics” advising the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), and the Science Advisory Board of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna. He is Research Affiliate at the Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE) and the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO).

Thomas appears regularly in national and international media and contributes to debates on economic policy and structural reforms. In the ranking of the most influential economists by Die Presse, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Neue Zürcher Zeitung, he was ranked 5th in Austria in 2019 (2018: 6th). In 2024 alone he was quoted 1,699 times in the media.