He studied International Economics at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and the University College Cork and received his PhD in Economics from the Ruhr Graduate School in Economics/Ruhr-University Bochum in 2011. From 2009 to 2013, he was a researcher in the RWI research department „Labor Markets, Education, Population”. He was also a visiting researcher at the Aarhus School of Business/Aarhus University and a visiting lecturer of Econometrics at the University of Magdeburg.