In Memory of Wolfgang Pollan

He worked at WIFO from 1963 to 1966, then went to the USA and received his PhD as an assistant to Professor and later Nobel Prize winner George Akerlof at the University of California, Berkeley, after starting his studies with Professor and long-time mentor Gerhard Tintner at the University of Southern California. After his re-employment at the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) from 1974 to 2005, he intensified and expanded the Institute's expertise in wage and price issues with new approaches and methods.

In this area of research, he provided important foundations for Austrian economic policy, and the regular analyses of unit labour cost developments in the WIFO-Monatsberichte (monthly reports) can be traced back to his initiative. Pollan pursued a strong international orientation, publishing regularly in international journals and thus making the Austrian situation known to an international specialist audience, while at the same time bringing international empirical findings to Austria, and he continued his research work even after his retirement in 2005, supporting younger WIFO colleagues with his professional and institutional expertise. He was also a member of the works council of WIFO from 1990 to 1995.

Please find below the dates of his first and last research papers at WIFO.