Prof. Dr. DDr. h.c. Caren Sureth-Sloane

Head of Chair of Business Economics, esp. Taxation

Paderborn University Faculty of Economics
Chair of Business Economics, esp. Taxation
Warburger Str. 100
33098 Paderborn

Academic career and research interests

Prof. Dr. DDr. h.c. Caren Sureth-Sloane has been Part-Time Professor of Accounting at WU Vienna since October 2026. Since 2004, she has been Professor of Business Administration, in particular Business Taxation, at Paderborn University.

Her research is devoted to the economic analysis of regulation in taxation and to greater transparency. In analytical and empirical studies, she examines how regulatory uncertainty and complexity arise and how they take effect: on the perception of tax rules and tax burdens, which is frequently distorted, and on business decisions. Her central focus is on how uncertainty, bureaucratic costs and a lack of trust influence investment, risk-taking, innovation and compliance with regulations. Further areas of interest are the measurement of tax complexity and the consequences of tax reforms. Her findings help to design regulation and tax incentives in a more targeted way and to strengthen trust in government action. She places great importance on science communication and thereby helps to counter misconceptions in politics and society.

Her work has received numerous awards. Beyond academia, her research resonates in politics, public administration, business and the media. Her work on tax complexity has been taken up by the finance ministries of several countries and by the European Commission, and has been covered by, among others, Börsen-Zeitung, the Financial Times (U.S.), Forbes, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Süddeutsche Zeitung.

She studied business administration and economics as well as English, French and Chinese at the University of Passau. She worked as a research associate and assistant at Bielefeld University, where she received her doctorate in 1999 and completed her habilitation in 2003. Following an interim professorship in Business Administration, in particular Corporate Accounting and Taxation, she was appointed to Paderborn University. She has also received offers of professorships from the University of Graz, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Goethe University Frankfurt and the University of Cologne. She has been affiliated with WU Vienna since 2010, initially as a Visiting Professor and as a Principal Investigator in the FWF Doctoral Program International Business Taxation (DIBT).

Caren Sureth-Sloane is Vice President of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and Speaker of the DFG Collaborative Research Center TRR 266 "Accounting for Transparency". She is also a Principal Investigator in the DFG Research Unit FOR 5583 "Asset Allocation and Asset Pricing under Regulatory Uncertainty". She has been a member of the Executive Board of the Schmalenbach Society for Business Administration since 2011 and its Vice President since 2019, and she contributes to its working groups "Taxes" and "Transfer Pricing". She is a full member of the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences, Humanities and the Arts, a founding member of the Working Group for Quantitative Tax Research (arqus) and a member of the steering committee of the Network for Empirical Tax Research (NeSt) at the German Federal Ministry of Finance.

In recognition of her contributions to research and scholarship, the University of Graz awarded her an honorary doctorate in 2021, followed by the University of Bremen in 2022.