ECONTRIBUTE EXCELLENCE CLUSTER (DFG)
ECONtribute is Germany’s Excellence Cluster in Economics. My research as a Principal Investigator in the Excellence Cluster spans the fields of finance and political economy.
The first research area studies systemic risks that are usually related to macro shocks. Systemic risk can be driven by parallel direct exposures of different financial institutions to macroeconomic risks (such as the risks of changes in interest rates, exchange rates, real-estate prices, or the overall economy) or by counterparty risk when many market participants try to remove the macro risks from their books through derivatives and other hedging arrangements, without reducing the overall system exposure to the fallout from macro shocks. With growing aggregate leverage, macro shocks to real estate markets have become a central source of systemic risk.
The second project in the research area political economy focusses on the extent to which extreme market outcomes such as financial crises distort the political decision making process. It relates performance measures from welfare economics to the analysis of political institutions and investigates whether an improved design of political institutions or of specific policies is called for.