He taught economics at the universities of Graz, Vienna and Saarbrücken, and worked at the OECD, the IMF and the World Bank -- mostly on labor markets, pensions and social-security systems. As World Bank Director he created together with the IZA Founding Director Klaus F. Zimmermann a research program combining the separated research fields development and labor economics. In January 2019, he was nominated to become the Head of the Austrian National Central Bank from September 2019 on.