Axel Ockenfels is Professor of Economics at the University of Cologne, Director of the Cologne Laboratory of Economic Research, and Coordinator of the Economics Department, of the DFG research group "Design & Behavior", and of the University's key profile area "Behavioral Economic Engineering and Social Cognition". He publishes in leading journals in economics, and also in business administration, information systems, psychology, and sociology, as well as in application-oriented outlets. Ockenfels is a Member of the Berlin Brandenburgische and of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, the Academic Advisory Board at the Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology, and the Scientific Advisory Board of the University of Cologne. In 2005 he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Science Foundation.
Ockenfels' research is based on the fact that people respond to incentives. While they do not always do so in a rational or selfish way, economic and social behavior follows systematic and predictable patterns. This allows devising models of 'real' economic behavior (as alternatives to the widely used homo oeconomicus model), and at the same time opens the door to market and strategy design as an engineering science.