Lars-Hendrik Röller

Professor Lars-Hendrik Röller, PhD, is a Director in the Berlin office. Prior to re-joining E.CA in February 2022, he served as the chief economic advisor to the former German Federal Chancellor, Angela Merkel, and as the first chief economist with DG Competition at the European Commission. Lars-Hendrik Röller is a proven expert in industrial economics and has unique expertise in providing economic advice in competition cases. His key topics of interest include the digital, energy, health and transportation markets. He is also a professor of economics at the ESMT Berlin.

In July 2011, Lars-Hendrik Röller took up the position as chief economic advisor to former German Federal Chancellor Merkel which he held until December 2021. From 2006 until July 2011, he was president of ESMT. In 2007, Lars-Hendrik Röller co-founded E.CA Economics with Hans W. Friederiszick and Rainer Nitsche. As a senior advisor, he advised numerous international companies, governments and international organizations on mergers, cartels, abuse and state aid cases and worked on economic assessments in the fields of antitrust and regulation.

From September 2003 to September 2006, Lars-Hendrik Röller was Chief Economist at DG Competition, European Commission. During that time, he was involved in all phase-two merger cases and many first phase merger cases in front of the European Commission. While Chief Economist, he was also involved in many other high profile antitrust and state aid cases. In addition, as Chief Economist, Professor Röller was actively engaged in a number of policy initiatives including the horizontal merger guidelines revision, the Article 82 2005 staff discussion paper, and the introduction of the new economic approach to state aid control.

Lars-Hendrik Röller’s academic career began in 1983 as a research assistant at the department of economics at the University of Pennsylvania. He then taught as a professor at INSEAD in France and also became director of the research unit for competitiveness and industrial change at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. In 1995, he was appointed professor of industrial economics at Humboldt University in Berlin.

Lars-Hendrik Röller holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania. He holds a master of arts in economics and a master of science in artificial intelligence, both from the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor of science in computer science from Texas A&M University.

Lars-Hendrik Röller has served as chairman of the German Economic Association and president of the European Association for Research in Industrial Economics (EARIE). He is a fellow of the European Economic Association and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences.

A detailed CV can be downloaded here.