Professor von Weizsäcker (b. 1954) conducts research in the areas of public finance (government debt, tax reform and the financing of social security systems), corporate financing (valuation and risk analysis), education economics, population economics and industrial economics.

He studied mathematics and economics at the University of Bonn, later earning his PhD from the London School of Economics (1985) and acquiring his postgraduate teaching qualification (habilitation) from the University of Bonn (1990). He taught at the University of Bonn, the Humboldt University of Berlin, the University of Halle-Wittenberg and the University of Mannheim until his appointment as professor at TUM in 2003.  Professor von Weizsäcker is a research fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research in London, the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Munich and the Institute for the Study of Labor in Bonn. He has been a visiting scholar at Cambridge University, UCL (Université Catholique de Louvain), the London School of Economics, Stanford University, Oxford University and the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. He has received a Heisenberg research grant from the German Research Foundation, DFG, and been a member of the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), one of the leading science policy advisory bodies in Germany. Since 2020 he is Emeritus of Excellence at TUM.