Thilo Kroeger

Dr. Thilo Kroeger is a German economist serving as an External Research Fellow at the Kiel Centre for Globalization (KCG), a Leibniz ScienceCampus based at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. He currently holds a postdoctoral position at EKF Denmark’s Export Credit Agency while maintaining academic affiliations with Copenhagen University. His research focuses on structural economic transformations, particularly servitization and its impacts on wage inequality within manufacturing establishments.

His primary research interests include International Economics, Labour Economics, Development Economics, Industrial Organization, and Competition Economics. Kroeger investigates how shifts toward service occupations within establishments affect wage distributions, finding that increased servitization accounts for approximately 7% of rising within-establishment wage inequality in German manufacturing between 1994-2017. His work demonstrates that higher servitization correlates with lower wage levels, especially for low-skilled manufacturing workers and those at the lower end of the wage spectrum.

Kroeger's publication trends reveal a consistent focus on global value chains, structural economic change, and labor market dynamics. His research employs matched employer-employee datasets to analyze occupational shifts and their distributional consequences, bridging theoretical models with empirical evidence from German manufacturing. Key methodological approaches include gravity models and analyses of firm-level volatility in international trade contexts.

As an active participant in the academic community, Kroeger regularly presents at major international conferences including the European Trade Study Group Conference and Midwest Economic Theory and International Trade Conference. He has engaged with leading institutions such as Yale University and the OECD through research visits and advanced seminars.

Kroeger mentors early-career researchers through KCG's doctoral program and collaborates extensively with institutions including the Deutsche Bundesbank, University of Warwick, and University of Trier. His work contributes to understanding how globalization and structural economic transformations affect labor markets and inequality.