Gert G. Wagner

Max Planck Fellow (2008–2019)
 

Collaboration with the MPI for Human Development
Max Planck Research Fellowship
Scientific Achievements
Research and Resulting Policy Advice

Gert G. Wagner was Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development (MPIB). He passed away unexpectedly on January 28, 2024, at the age of 71.

Wagner was a pioneering economist and social scientist whose work bridged disciplines, institutions, and policy. He studied economics and sociology at Goethe University Frankfurt (1971–1978) and began his career in 1979 at the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG)-funded Collaborative Research Center "Microanalytical Foundations of Social Policy" at the Universities of Frankfurt/Main and Mannheim, where he served as research assistant and later managing director.

From 1989 to 2011, Wagner headed the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP) at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin). He served on DIW Berlin's executive board for many years, including as its chair and president from 2011 to 2013. He held professorships in social policy and public economics at Ruhr University Bochum (1992–1997), in empirical economic research and economic policy at the European University Viadrina (1997–2002), and in economics at Technische Universität Berlin (2002–2018).

Collaboration with the MPI for Human Development

Wagner's collaboration with the Institute began in the late 1980s as a visiting scientist and member of the core project group of the Berlin Aging Study (BASE).

In BASE, he examined the economic circumstances and behavior of older Berliners, showing that individuals with higher levels of education were more likely than those with less education to access government benefits. In response, he advocated establishing "senior citizen agencies" to help older adults make full use of available support services. He later served as co-principal investigator of the Berlin Aging Study II (BASE-II), where he was the socio-economic cornerstone and a vital bridge to the SOEP: Through Wagner, BASE-II participants were integrated into the SOEP, substantially expanding the scope and longitudinal reach of aging research. Beyond these structural achievements, Wagner's curiosity-driven leadership pushed the boundaries of how human experience is assessed, and he championed research on how the physical living environment shapes the aging process—a perspective that remains central to the institute's work.

Max Planck Research Fellowship

At the MPIB, Wagner was appointed a Max Planck Research Fellow in 2008 and remained a Research Fellow after 2019. He collaborated closely with the Center for Adaptive Rationality and the Center for Lifespan Psychology and served on the faculty of the International Max Planck Research School on the Life Course (LIFE). He also helped establish research data management as a strategic topic at MPIB, contributing to the Institute's Research Data Management Group from its inception.

Scientific Achievements

Wagner's most significant scientific achievements include opening the SOEP to sociological and psychological measurements and driving numerous methodological innovations, thereby strengthening one of the world's leading longitudinal infrastructures for the social sciences. As the founding chairman of the German Data Forum (RatSWD), he played a pivotal role in developing Germany's social science research infrastructure. He also provided influential policy advice, serving on the Advisory Board of the Federal Statistical Office, the German Bundestag's Enquete Commission "Growth, Prosperity and Quality of Life," and the German Evangelical Church's Chamber for Social Order (Kammer für soziale Ordnung der EKD). He was a member of the National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), an associate of the Harding Center for Risk Literacy, and a fellow at the Federal Institute for Population Research (BiB). He also served on the German government's Social Advisory Council and was a past member of the German Science Council, holding a prominent place in the academic landscape of Berlin and Germany.

Through his intellectual leadership, institutional stewardship, and sustained commitment to rigorous, interdisciplinary, and policy-relevant research, Wagner shaped the evidence base for understanding social and economic life across the lifespan. His legacy continues to inform the Institute's strategic priorities in aging research, data infrastructure, and the translation of science into societal benefit.

Research and Resulting Policy Advice

Wagner's research interests were wide-ranging, yet he consistently sought to translate empirical findings into actionable policy advice—even making this translation process itself a subject of scientific inquiry. This commitment is exemplified by a posthumously published 2025 article co-authored with Benedikt Fecher and Nataliia Sokolovska.

The study showed that in German local politics, growing demand for expertise is met less by universities and public research institutes than by "quasi‑scientific actors" such as commercial consultancies, which are perceived as both scientific and solution‑ and process‑oriented. Drawing on 17 interviews with mayors, senior administrators, and researchers across four federal states, the authors found that academic advice at the municipal level is typically linear (one‑off reports and assessments), weakly institutionalized (no dedicated structures or staff), and dependent on personal networks and geography—larger, wealthier, and university‑proximate cities engage more. In contrast, quasi‑scientific actors provide recurrent, reciprocal, and process‑bound support, and are seen as faster, more practical, and cheaper. Local decision‑makers value the neutrality associated with academia, but favor tailored, iterative guidance in their daily work. A mismatch in operational logistics further limits academic influence: Science and local politics differ in problem framing, timelines, language, and incentives, and municipalities lack resources to sustain research links. Consequently, sustained dialogic or co‑productive models rarely describe academia–local government relations; they better fit interactions with quasi‑scientific actors. This lack of a longer-term interactive model raises questions about quality assurance, legitimacy, and potential democratic risks when advice presented as "scientific" lacks academic standards. The authors called for new institutional arrangements to bridge the gap: capacity for science relations in administrations (e.g., at district/regional levels), platforms linking researchers and local officials, incentives for academic engagement (particularly at universities of applied sciences), and safeguards and standards for advisory quality.

A second of Wagner's longtime research interests was the concept of risk preference. Across several decades, Wagner pursued a few key questions: How do people differ in their willingness to take risks, how do those differences shape life-course outcomes, and how can risk preference be measured in ways that are both rigorous and practical? He often began with self-reflection—calling himself "risk-averse," despite his bold institutional leadership—and turned that curiosity into methodological innovation. With colleagues in the SOEP and beyond, Wagner helped establish a simple yet powerful instrument: Asking people directly about their general willingness to take risks. This approach, developed with Thomas Dohmen, Armin Falk, David Huffman, Uwe Sunde, and Jürgen Schupp, has since been adopted worldwide. It challenged the longstanding economic dogma that only observed choices reliably reveal preferences by demonstrating that carefully designed self-reports can validly capture stable individual differences and link them to income, health, and well-being across the life course.

The COVID-19 pandemic offered a natural experiment that aligned with Wagner's agenda to connect measurement, behavior, and policy. In a 2024 study with Michael Schulte-Mecklenbeck and Ralph Hertwig that drew on 17 waves of panel data from more than 15,000 German adults (March 2020–May 2022), the authors examined how personal experience shaped judgments of infection risk. Four findings stand out. First, direct experience of infection consistently heightened perceived risk—an experiential amplification that persisted across waves. Second, indirect experience followed a graded pattern tied to social distance: Infections among family members raised perceived risk more than infections among friends, colleagues, or neighbors. The risk judgments of individuals with any type of indirect experience exceeded those of individuals with no experience. Third, media attention and Google searches were positively associated with risk judgments early in the pandemic. This correlation weakened as coverage and searches declined, underscoring that risk judgments did not simply track national incidence. Fourth, compared to younger adults, older adults judged the likelihood of infection to be lower but, especially in 2020 and early 2021, reported greater fear of a life-threatening case—consistent with stricter precautionary behavior.

Along with Wagner's broader work on measuring risk preferences, the study underscores his distinctive contribution: integrating scalable, validated measures with real-time behavioral evidence to reveal how individual differences in risk-taking shape decisions—and how policy can meet people where they are. Wagner's legacy bridges methodological innovation and societal relevance, advancing the understanding of risk, risk preferences, and risk communication, and improving the use of scientific evidence for the public good.

Key References