Benedikt Herrmann

After graduating with a master's degree in molecular biology from the University of Bayreuth in Germany, Benedikt worked for several years as a programme director for future leaders in the former Soviet Union. He then embarked on a PhD in experimental economics at the University of Göttingen, researching the nature of civil cooperation in Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. As a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, he studied trust behaviour in Gulf countries. In 2008, he joined the European Commission (EC), first working on the economic analysis of the EU Member States' research and innovation policies. From 2011 to 2016, he established the 'Behavioural Economics Team' at the EC's Joint Research Centre. During experimental research into tax compliance in EU member states, his team recognised the importance of local taxes as a potential driver of economic growth and tax compliance. This work led to his secondment to Kyiv, Ukraine, where he provided analytical support for the country's decentralisation reform from 2016 to 2020. Since returning to the Joint Research Centre, he has been working on local revenue structures and territorial development. He has published work in various scientific fields, with his articles appearing in journals such as Science, the American Economic Review and Materials Science and Engineering.