Hans Peter Grüner studied economics and mathematics at Heidelberg University, where he received his degree as Diplom-Volkswirt in 1990. He was a student in the European Doctoral Programme in Quantitative Economics at Bonn University and at DELTA/Paris. 1994 Docteur de l’Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris (dissertation on Central Bank Credibility and Labor Markets in Europe). He has worked as an Assistant Professor at Konstanz (1994-96) and Bonn University (1996-99). In 1999 he completed his post-doctoral Habilitation entitled The Economics of Distributive Politics at Bonn University. Since 1999 he is a Professor of Economics at Mannheim University. Hans Peter Grüner's research focuses on the design of political and economic institutions. His main fields of interests are political economy, mechanism design, economic and monetary policy, capital market theory, labour market reform and the theory of income and wealth distribution. He was awarded fellowships from the EU-Commission and from DAAD. He is a member of the European Economic Association, the American Economic Association, Verein für Socialpolitik, a Research Fellow of CEPR, London, and a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Political Economy. He was an academic visitor at Oxford University, University of Pennsilvania, London Business School, the Toyota Center at the LSE, UCL, and the Hebrew University Jerusalem. From 2007-2008 he was the Head of the Department of Economics at Mannheim University. Since 2010 he is a member of the board of special research unit 884 “Political economy of reforms”, sponsored by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.