Enrico Santarelli is Professor of Economic Policy at the University of Bologna. From 2003 to 2009 he was also Research Professor at the Max Planck Institute of Economics (Entrepreneurship, Growth and Public Policy Group) in Jena (Germany), and in 2010 served as Senior scientist (GH40) at the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (JRC-IPTS) of the European Commission. He has been a Visiting professor in several universities across the globe, including: Berkeley, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Maastricht, Saarland, Stanford, and Sussex. He was also consultant to the European Commission, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER), and several private organizations and companies.

He served in the Executive Committee of the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE) from 2004 to 2010.

He is Editor of Small Business Economics, and a member of the Editorial board of the Eurasian Business Review.

His main research interests are in the fields of entrepreneurship & innovation, law & economics, and labor economics.