Dr. Armin Mertens

Head of Big Data Analytics Research Unit

Tel: +49 221 4981-747 Mail: armin.mertens@iwkoeln.de Armin Mertens

Since 2019 at the IW
PhD in Political Economy and Computational Social Science at the Cologne Graduate School in Management, Economics and Social Sciences, University of Cologne
Studies in political science, economic geography and economics at the University of Cologne, University of Düsseldorf and University of Prague
Main research interests: Natural Language Processing (NLP), Machine Learning, Statistics/Econometrics, Data Visualization.

Empirical clusters

IW Publications

Risius, Paula / Quispe, Valeria / Malin, Lydia / Arndt, Franziska / Mertens, Armin / Engler, Jan Felix, 2025, Der Einfluss von beruflicher Ähnlichkeit und Arbeitsmarktbedingungen auf Berufswechsel, IW-Report, Nr. 40, Köln
Zur Studie

Büchel, Jan / Engler, Jan Felix / Mertens, Armin, 2023, Gesuchte Datenkompetenzen in Deutschland, in: IW-Trends, 50. Jg., Nr. 2, S. 3-17
Zur Studie

Büchel, Jan / Mertens, Armin, 2023, Wofür Unternehmen ChatGPT einsetzen, IW-Kurzbericht, Nr. 31, Köln
Zur Studie

External Publications

Mertens, Armin / Scheufen, Marc, 2024, Intellectual property and fourth industrial revolution technologies: how the patent system is shaping the future in the data-driven economy, in: European Journal of Law and Economics, Vol. 57, Nr. 1, pp.275-310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10657-023-09789-2
Zur Studie

Eger, Thomas/ Mertens, Armin/ Scheufen, Marc, 2021, Publication Cultures and the Citation Impact of Open Access, in: Managerial and Decision Economics, early view
Zur Studie

Regulating the audit market in the European Union: who dominates, who loses?
Journal of European Public Policy, Volume 26, Issue 12, 2019, pp. 1818-1835.

(in cooperation with Christine Trampusch, Florian Fastenrath and Rebecca Wangemann)
The political economy of local government financialization and the role of policy diffusion
Regulation & Governance, 2019, online first: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/rego.12285

(in cooperation with Franziska Pradel, Ayjeren Rozyjumayeva and Jens Wäckerle)
As the tweet, so the reply? Gender bias in digital communication with politicians
Proceedings oft he 11th ACM Conference on Web Science (WebSci’19), June 30-July 3, 2019, Boston, MA, USA, pp. 193-201.

(in cooperation with Georg Wilke, Clemens Schneider, Jennifer Drach, Philipp Hillebrand and Sven Neumann)
Modellprojekt E-Carflex Business – Begleitforschung
Schlussbericht, Wuppertal Institut für Klima, Umwelt, Energie, 2017.

More from Dr. Armin Mertens

Expertise 8. September 2026 Jan Büchel / Jan Engler / Armin Mertens

AI skills demand in the EU

More and more companies in Europe are using artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. In 2025, one in five companies in the EU with 10 employees or more used at least one major AI technology, up from 8% in 2023 (Eurostat, 2026a).

IW-Report No. 40 12. September 2025 Paula Risius et al.

The influence of occupational similarity and labor market conditions on occupational change

Germany urgently needs skilled workers in various professions for the energy transition: in the 31 energy-related professions considered in this study, almost 119,000 of the total 185,000 vacancies could not be filled in 2024.

External Publication

how the patent system is shaping the future in the data-driven economy

External Publication 29. May 2024 Armin Mertens / Marc Scheufen in European Journal of Law and Economics

Intellectual property and fourth industrial revolution technologies: how the patent system is shaping the future in the data-driven economy

Using the classification system from the European Patent Office (EPO), we identify almost 600,000 patent applications for fourth industrial revolution technologies from 1986 to 2015.

IW-Trends No. 2 14. June 2023 Jan Büchel / Jan Felix Engler / Armin Mertens

The Demand for Data Skills in Germany – Results of a Big Data Analysis

Employees with data skills help companies to store, manage and use data more efficiently.

IW-Kurzbericht No. 32 13. May 2023 Jan Büchel / Armin Mertens

How companies use ChatGPT

ChatGPT is currently very popular. The AI can answer questions in seconds, summarize entire texts or create programming code. On the one hand, there are many advantages for the economy and society, on the other hand, experts warn of dangers and call for regulation. It is therefore interesting to see whether and for what purposes companies are already using ChatGPT.

External Publication

Publication cultures and the citation impact of open access

External Publication 1. September 2021 Thomas Eger / Armin Mertens / Marc Scheufen

Publication cultures and the citation impact of open access

With the advent of electronic publishing and the Internet, the traditional business model of academic publishing, based on subscription fees paid by the readers/libraries (closed access [CA] journals), has to some extent been replaced and to some extent complemented by different types of open access (OA).

IW-Policy Paper No. 21 13. October 2020 Alevtina Krotova / Armin Mertens / Marc Scheufen

An Economic Analysis: Open Data and Data Sharing

Data is an important business resource. It forms the basis for various digital technologies such as artificial intelligence or smart services. However, access to data is unequally distributed in the market. Hence, some business ideas fail due to a lack of data sources.

IW-Report No. 47 14. September 2020 Armin Mertens / Ruth Maria Schüler

Online Petitions as an Indicator of Current Polarization Tendencies

The COVID-19 measures of the federal and state governments have at times massively affected public life in Germany. The ban on contact has temporarily restricted the freedom to pursue a profession, the freedom of trade, compulsory education and religious freedom.

IW-Report No. 17 5. May 2020 Jasmina Kirchhoff / Armin Mertens / Marc Scheufen

The Corona Innovation Race in Science

This report is an analysis of the scientific publications on the fight against the corona pandemic and its significance for Germany as a pharmaceutical location.