Christian Pfeifer studied economics and management at Leibniz University Hannover, Germany, and Maastricht University, Netherlands. He received his Diploma (Master) in 2003 and doctoral degree in 2007 from Leibniz University Hannover. From 2007 to 2009 he was a Post-Doc at Leibniz University Hannover and University of California Berkeley. From September 2009 to June 2013 he was Assistant Professor (W1) of Economics (Labor and Personnel Economics) at Leuphana University Lüneburg. Since June 2013 he is Professor of Economics (Applied Microeconomics) at Leuphana University Lüneburg. His research focus is on applied microeconomic topics (e.g., Labour and Personnel Economics, Health and Education) using microeconometric methods.

He joined IZA as a Research Affiliate in July 2007 and became a Research Fellow in April 2010.