Alexander S. Kritikos is member of the Executive Board and Research Director at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW) Berlin and Professor for Industrial and Institutional Economics at the University of Potsdam. Born in 1965, he studied economics and political sciences at the University of Munich where he received his degree as Diplom-Volkswirt. After a scholarship at the 'post graduate programme for Applied Microeconomics' of the Free University of Berlin he received his doctoral degree in Economics at the Humboldt-University of Berlin in 1996 and his Habilitation in Economics at the European University Viadrina in 2003. His research interests are Entrepreneurship Research and Innovation, and Behavioral and Institutional Economics.

Alexander S. Kritikos was Research Fellow of the German Marshall Fund in Washington (1999) and EU-TMR Research Fellow at der Athens University of Economics (2000). He is member of the Economic Policy Committee and of the Social Sciences Committee of the German Economic Association, and Research Fellow of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), Nuremberg. Since 2010 he is Editor of Small Business Economics. Between 2012 and 2016, he served as Managing Editor of IZA World of Labor. His articles have been published among others in Economics Letters, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, Journal of Population Economics, Research Policy, and Small Business Economics.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in 2008.