Dr. Christoph M. Schmidt is a Vice President at Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften eV, a Member at Franco-German Chamber of Commerce and a President at RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung e.V.

He is on the Board of Directors at Bayerische Motoren Werke AG. Since 2002 he is president of RWI and professor at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Since 2009 he has been a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. Since March 2013, he has been chairman of the Council. Since June 2011, he is member of acatech – Deutsche Akademie der Technikwissenschaften. Since 2013 he has been chairperson of the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance board of trustees in Munich. Since June 2016, he has been a member of the scientific advisory council of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation. Since November 2017, he has been a Member of the OECD International Network on Financial Education (INFE) Research Committee. Since 1992, he has been a Research Affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR London), since 1996 a CEPR Research Fellow, and since 1998 he is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn.

From 2009 to 2020, he was a German Council of Economic Experts member. From March 2013 to February 2020, he was chairman of the Council. Between 2011 and 2013, he was a member of the Enquete-Commission “Wachstum, Wohlstand, Lebensqualität” (“Growth, Welfare, Quality of Live”) of the German Bundestag. From 1995 to 2002, he taught econometrics and labor economics as a Full Professor at the University of Heidelberg. Schmidt was awarded a Princeton University Fellowship, 1987-1990, the Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 1990-1991, and was a fellow of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) 1992-1995.

He studied economics at the University of Mannheim, Germany, where he received his degree as Diplom-Volkswirt in 1987, at Princeton University.