Richard Musgrave Visiting Professorship 2016: Kai A. Konrad

The 2016 award winner of the Richard Musgrave Visiting Professorship is Kai A. Konrad, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance. Kai Konrad was a chaired Professor of Economics at the Freie Universität Berlin from 1994 to 2009 and concurrently a director at the Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB) from 2001 to 2009 before he joined the Max Planck Society as a scientific member.

Kai Konrad is also a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the National Academy of Science and Engineering, and of several other science academies and international research networks. He is a Co-editor of the Journal of Public Economics and on the editorial boards of several international journals in Economics and Political Science. Since 1999 he is a member of the Council of Scientific Advisors to the Federal Ministry of Finance and was the chairperson of this council from 2011-2014.

His scientific interest focuses on understanding the functioning of the state and other private or public communities. His Richard Musgrave Lecture, titled "Brothers in Arms – Theory and Experimental Evidence on Alliances", delivered on 7 April 2016, addressed key issues of why and when alliances form, how cooperation in alliances emerges in the shadow of conflict and what happens if members of an alliance have achieved their common goals.