Globalization is changing the world. The openings up of Eastern Europe as well as the rise of the Chinese economy are unprecedented events in the history of human civilization. The emerging markets are gaining in importance. We can observe how the world economy is quickly developing into a more equal and stronger integrated web of trade, financial transactions and migration flows between different countries and multinational economic zones. Growth impulses as well as the demand or financial shocks are quickly transmitted between countries and their positive or negative impact is potentially amplified by the international environment. The complex developments of globalization age require a better understanding of the underlying trends both from the economic and empirical point of view.

The team at the ZEPPELIN Chair of International & Digital Economics is small but efficient. Professor Dr Jarko Fidrmuc has gathered diverse interdisciplinary experience at universities and at several research institutes. He completed his PhD degree in economics at the University of Vienna. In 2005 he was appointed as a Professor of Political Economics and European Integration at the Economics Faculty and the Geschwister Scholl Institute of the University of Munich (LMU). Before he joined Zeppelin University as Professor of International Economics in 2011, he worked at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna and the Foreign Research Department of the Austrian National Bank (OeNB). Martin Siddiqui joined the team after his master degree in economics at the University of Mannheim. There is an intensive exchange of ideas with the students of Zeppelin University, they are involved in the research of the chair while they are writing their bachelor and master theses, and as student research assistants. Carolina Rachel is currently working as student research assistant.

The research at the ZEPPELIN Chair of International & Digital Economics is strongly focused on European integration, globalization, and political economics. The researchers increasingly try to answer macroeconomic questions by applying newly developed tools to analyze microeconomic data on individual households, firms, and banks. An additional field of research covered by the chair concentrates on the interdisciplinary application of the meta-analysis.

Research Focus

• Empirical analysis of European integration
• Empirical analysis of globalization
• Analysis of economic cycles and theory of optimal currency areas 
• Development of emerging economies in Eastern Europe and Asia
• Financing of small and medium-sized enterprises
• Financing of households and banks
• Institutional Economics
• Sharing Economy

Teaching Focus

• Macroeconomics
• Political economy
• Advanced Macroeconomics
• Development Economics
• Introduction of Economics

Partnerships

• CESifo Munich
• Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS), Regensburg
• Institute of Economic Studies, Charles University Prague, Czech Republic
• Mendel University Brno
• Bank of Finland
• National Bank of Slovakia
• Henan University, Kaifeng, China