Bucher-Koenen Joins ZEW as Head of Financial Research Department

Dr. Tabea Bucher-Koenen is the new head of the Research Department “International Finance and Financial Management” at the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim. Her research focuses particularly on pension schemes, social policy and financial literacy. Tabea Bucher-Koenen looks forward to commencing her work at ZEW: “I am excited about the new challenges at ZEW, and especially about the opportunity to contribute to the institute’s policy advising activities with my research findings.”

“ZEW is very fortunate to welcome Dr. Tabea Bucher-Koenen as head of the financial research department,” says President Professor Achim Wambach. “We managed to appoint a distinguished researcher with years of leadership experience who will bring new impetus to the Research Department ‘International Finance and Financial Management’ with her work on financial literacy and pension schemes.”

Tabea Bucher-Koenen studied business and intercultural management at Friedrich Schiller University Jena, as well as European integration at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. In 2006, she successfully completed her graduate degree, and gained her PhD from the University of Mannheim in 2010. During her doctorate, she worked as a research fellow at the Mannheim Research Institute for the Economics of Aging at the University of Mannheim. After that, she was a visiting researcher at Dartmouth College, US, before taking the position as head of the research unit “Health Economics” at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy in 2011, where she later served as head of the unit “Old-Age Provision and Social Policy” from 2014 to 2018.

Bucher-Koenen’s research focuses on household finance, the economics of ageing and demographic change with a special emphasis on private and public pension schemes.Her most recent publications mainly focus on individual savings behaviour and insurance decisions, as well as on the significance of financial literacy and information.

The ZEW Research Department “International Finance and Financial Management” deals with issues related to bank regulation, the effects of the European financial architecture on the real economy, household finance as well as the real estate and housing markets in Europe.