Dennis Snower

Dennis J. Snower (born 14 October 1950) is an American-German economist, specialising in macroeconomic theory and policy, labor economics, digital governance, social economics, and the psychology of economic decisions in "caring economics".

He is President of the Global Solutions Initiative in Berlin, Professorial Research Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at Oxford University, Fellow at the New Institute in Hamburg, and Non-resident Fellow of the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. He is former president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

His prominent labor research explores the role of “insiders” and “outsiders” in generating unemployment and macroeconomic fluctuations; his socio-economic research examines how social groups shape economic behavior; his psycho-economic research explains how economic decisions depend on psychological motives; and his macroeconomic research investigates why inflation and unemployment can move in opposite directions even in the long run.

Snower was born in Vienna, Austria, where he went to the American International School.

He received a BA and MA from New College, Oxford University, an MA and a PhD from Princeton University.

He is a US citizen, married and has two children.

He received a BA and MA from New College, Oxford University (in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, 1971), an MA and a PhD from Princeton University (1975).

He served as assistant professor at the University of Maryland, before he moved to the Vienna Institute for Advanced Studies and then to Birkbeck College, University of London, where he became Professor of Economics.

In 2004 he became President of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Professor of Economics at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel.

During the German G20 Presidency 2017 Dennis J. Snower, together with Dirk Messner from the German Development Institute (DIE), were mandated to lead the Think 20 (T20), a consortium of think tanks from the G20 countries with the aim of supporting G20 decision-makers with research-based recommendations for action.

Unlike other G20 engagement groups, such as Women 20 (W20), Business 20 (B20) or Youth 20 (Y20), the T20 does not represent an interest group, but rather gives policy advice in the global public interest.

From this commitment, Snower founded the Global Solutions Initiative, of which he is president today, and which offers policy advice, particularly the G20 and the G7.

Following the German G20 Presidency, the Initiative has held an annual summit in Berlin, Germany that occurs in the middle of the G20 calendar: The Global Solutions Summit aims to connect representatives of governments, international organizations and business as well as global civil society to discuss solutions to urgent global problems, while making a case for multilateralism and international cooperation.

As part of the Global Solutions Initiative, Snower founded the "Council for Global Problem-Solving" (CGP), which aims to develop policy proposals for the G20 and associated international organizations and serves as a catalyst for research-based global problem-solving.

The insider-outsider theory of employment and unemployment, created by Dennis Snower in conjunction with Assar Lindbeck, explains employment and unemployment in terms of a conflict of interest between insiders and outsiders in the labor market.

Insiders are employees whose positions are protected by labor turnover costs (such as costs of hiring, training, and firing, or costs arising when insiders cooperate with each other but not with outsiders).

Outsiders enjoy no such protection.

The insider-outsider theory has spawned a large literature on unemployment dynamics, dual labor markets, employment policy, macroeconomic policy, social inequality, and political economy.

The chain reaction theory of unemployment, conceived by Snower together with Marika Karanassou and Hector Sala, views movements in unemployment as the outcome of the interplay between labor market shocks and a network of lagged adjustment processes.

This theory indicates that cyclical and structural unemployment are interdependent.

This implies that the lagged adjustment processes – for example, current employment depends on past employment on account of labor market adjustment costs – are shape both for the fluctuations in unemployment and the long-run unemployment rate.

The theory on the reorganization of work towards multi-tasking, created by Dennis Snower in conjunction with Assar Lindbeck, identifies driving forces underlying the shift from “Tayloristic” organizations (characterized by specialization by tasks) to “holistic” organizations (featuring job rotation, integration of tasks and learning across tasks).

It was one of the first contributions analyzing the fundamental changes in the world of work arising from the digital revolution and was a precursor of the large literature on the polarization of work.

Caring economics, created by Snower in conjunction with Tania Singer and their respective research teams, laid the analytical and empirical foundations for a new theory of microeconomic decision making, based on underlying psychological motives.

The analysis rests on the insights that all economic behavior is psychologically motivated, everyone has access to an array of discrete motivation systems, which affect their objectives, as well as their beliefs and perceptions, and which motive is active at any particular point in time depends on the person's physical and social context.

This research has generated wide-ranging insights, such as for psychology, mental training, identity economics, environmental psychology, and welfare policy.

Together with George Akerlof and Steven Bosworth, Snower made seminal contributions to identity and narrative economics.

This work explores the formation of competitive versus cooperative identities and the channels whereby narratives affect economic decisions.

It has influenced thinking in political economy, socio-economics, psychology, behavioral finance and environmental economics.

Snower laid the theoretical and empirical groundwork for a reappraisal of the Phillips curve – the tradeoff between inflation and unemployment – in conjunction with Liam Graham, Marika Karanassou, Hector Sala, Mewael Tessfaselassie and Andrea Vaona.

This approach suggests that unemployment is not independent of inflation in the long run, but instead explores the circumstances under which there is an inverse long-run relation between inflation and unemployment.

This theory calls into question the conventional claim that real economic activity is independent of monetary phenomena in the long run.

The approach rests on the theory of “frictional growth,” focusing on the interplay between nominal frictions and money growth.

This work breaks the conventional compartmentalization of macroeconomics into short-term macroeconomic fluctuations versus long-term growth.

This research has influenced work on monetary policy, behavioral economics, and macroeconomic theory.

He received German citizenship in 2018.

He held this position until he reached retirement age at the end of February 2019.

In 2019 he founded the Global Solutions Initiative, which advises the G20 and G7.

Snower was a visiting professor at many universities around the world, including Columbia University, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, the European University Institute, Stockholm University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Tel Aviv.

He has advised a variety of international organizations and national governments on macroeconomic policy, employment policy and welfare state policy.