Harald Stieber is an economist at the European Commission. Areas of research include cost of access to law, structural and institutional developments in the EU’s single market, capital structure choices of non-financial companies, measurement of financial integration, economics of blockchain, P2P finance, bankruptcy rules, institutional economics, balance sheet approaches to managing macro-financial risk.

He has previously worked as country desk on Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Hungary and Romania, and in the case of the latter two has been member of the negotiating teams during three joint IMF-EU financial assistance programmes between 2009 and 2011.

Before joining the European Commission, Dr. Stieber was responsible for macroeconomic modelling in the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance, including for the compilation of the Austrian Stability Programme and the stress testing of its central macroeconomic scenario.

From 2002-2007 he was the Austrian member of the OECD’s Working Party 1 on structural economic policies. In 2004, he was seconded to the OECD Economics Department, and in 2005 he was cleared for recruitment in the same department. In 2008, Stieber has become EU official. In 2017-2018 Dr. Stieber was the EU fellow at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University.

Harald Stieber received his master’s degree in economics from the University of Vienna and his doctorate degree in economics from Vienna University of Economics and Business. A German native speaker, he is also fluent in English and French.