Tobias Thomas
Tobias Thomas is Director General (Statistics) of Statistics Austria, Vice Chair of the Austrian Productivity Council (PROD), and Professor of Economics at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Furthermore, Thomas is Vice President of the Austrian Statistical Society (ÖSG), scientific expert at the Austrian Pension Commission, and member of the Commission Future of Statistics (KomZS) on the Strategic Development of the German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis). In addition, Thomas is member of the Science Advisory Board of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna (CSH), member of the Committee on Economic Systems and Institutional Economics of the Verein für Socialpolitik, and Fellow at the Center for Media, Data and Society (CMDS) of the Central European University (CEU).
Internationally, Thomas represents Austria in the European Statistical System Committee (ESSC), the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC), the United Nations Conference of European Statisticians (UNCES), and the OECD Committee on Statistics and Statistical Policy (CSSP). In 2021, he was also elected by the ESS member states to the Partnership Group (ESS-PG), which provides strategic advice to the work of the ESSC. In addition, Thomas is member of the UNCES task force on data stewardship.
After studying economics at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Bonn and Technische Universität Berlin, Thomas earned his doctorate summa cum laude from the Helmut Schmidt University in Hamburg, where he later also completed his habilitation. Thomas was visiting scholar at, among others, Columbia University in New York (USA) at the invitation of Nobel Laureate in Economics Joseph E. Stiglitz and Anya Schiffrin as well as at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance in Munich at the invitation of Kai A. Konrad. Thomas regularly presents his research findings at scientific conferences and in scientific journals. Furthermore, Thomas appears regularly in national and international media. In 2022, he was quoted 1 601 times in Austrian media only (2021: 1 413 times).
The Director General Statistics together with the financial manager forms the board of directors of Statistics Austria. From 1 August to 31 December 2023, Andreas Herrmann will head the financial agendas on an interim basis. As of 1 January 2024, Franz Haslauer will take over the financial management.