Julian Hinz is Director of the Trade Policy Research Group at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy and Professor of International Economics at Bielefeld University. His research sits at the intersection of international economics and data science. He studies how trade policy and geopolitical tensions—such as sanctions, embargoes, tariff disputes, or “decoupling”—shape trade flows, prices, and adjustment processes at the level of firms, regions, and economies. Methodologically, he combines state-of-the-art empirical work (often using big data) with quantitative models for scenario analysis, and develops research software and simulation tools, including the KITE model.

Hinz received his PhD from the Paris School of Economics and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, and was a Max Weber Fellow at the European University Institute (2018–2019). He previously headed the Kiel Institute’s Trade Policy Task Force. His work has been published in leading journals, including the Journal of International Economics, Economic Policy, and the European Economic Review. He is an Associate Editor of the Review of World Economics and a member of the CEPR Research Network on Geoeconomics. In 2025, he was featured in Capital magazine’s “Top 40 under 40”, and since 2026 he has also been a DG GROW Fellow at the European Commission.