Prof. Dr. Michael Bräuninger is a research director at the Hamburg Institute of International Economics (HWWI) and Professor at the Helmut-Schmidt University Hamburg.

Michael Bräuninger studied at the Universities of Münster, Edinburgh and Hamburg. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Hamburg for an empirical analysis of factor markets. After that he worked as a postdoc at the Helmut-Schmidt University Hamburg, where he obtained his habilitation in 1999 for a thesis on social security. In 2005, Michael Bräuninger joined the Hamburgisches Welt-Wirtschafts-Archiv  (HWWA). The focus of his work was on public sector economics. He participated in the biannual tax forecasts and in the joint business cycle forecast of German research institutes.

The research areas of Michael Bräuninger are business cycle and long term developments. He leads the HWWI business cycle forecasts and different studies on long term global trends and their impact on the German economy. There is a special emphasis on energy and raw material markets.