Graduates: Academic Placements
(including policy research positions and postdoctoral researchers)
Students who have graduated since 2006, with their first placements after the PhD. Successful recent academic placements include faculty positions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA), SAFE at Goethe University Frankfurt (Germany), University of Melbourne (Australia), Tilburg University and VU Amsterdam (Netherlands), University of Vienna (Austria), University of St. Gallen (CH) and various postdoctoral positions, for example at MIT, LSE or EPFL.
2025
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Elliot Beck | Improved Inference and Forecasting in Economics and Finance | Markus Leippold | Data Scientist at SNB, Zurich, Switzerland |
| Emanuela Benincasa | Three Essays on Banking, Climate Risks, and Corporate Sustainability | Steven Ongena | Assistant Professor at the University of Sydney, Australia |
| Ana Mao de Ferro | Finance in a World of Uncertainty and Crises | Alexander Wagner | Assistant Professor at the Emlyon Business School, Lyon, France |
| Benjamin Schneider | Essays on Signaling, Sustainability, and Collateral in Fixed-Income Markets | Kjell Nyborg | Assistant Professor at the HEC Montreal, Canada |
2024
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Winta Beyene | Essays in Empirical Banking and Climate Finance | Steven Ongena | Postdoctoral Researcher, Leibniz Institute for Financial Research, Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe (SAFE), Germany |
| Giulio Cornelli | Essays on Fintech and Digital Currencies | Steven Ongena | Bank for International Settlements, Basel, Switzerland |
| Luca Gaegauf | Essays in Finance | Felix Kübler | Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Geneva, Switzerland |
| Daniel Grosshans | Beliefs in Financial Economics | Thorsten Hens | Postdoctoral Researcher, Economic Psychology, University of Basel, Switzerland |
| Alexandra Matyunina | Essays on Bank Credit Supply | Steven Ongena | Banco de España, Madrid, Spain |
2023
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Jiyuan Huang | Factor structure and Machine Learning in Finance | Per Östberg | Assistant Professor at Corvinus University of Budapest, Hungary |
| Jan Toczynski | Essays in Empirical Finance | Christoph Basten | First Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland Current Placement: Lecturer in Finance at Queen Mary University of London, UK |
2022
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Simon Hediger | New Methods for Testing, Prediction, and Estimation with Applications to Finance | Markus Leippold | Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Economics, University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| Florian Heeb | Three Essays on the Impact of Sustainable Investing | Marc Chesney | First Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, MIT Sloan School of Management, Cambridge (MA), USA Current Placement: Assistant Professor, SAFE, Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany |
| Michele Pelli | Essays on Unconventional Central Bank Policies | Michel Habib | Economist, Research Collaboration Unit, Central Bank of Ireland, Dublin, Ireland |
| Alexander Smirnow | Risk Measures and their Applications in Quantitative Finance | Walter Farkas | Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Finance, University of Zurich, Switzerland |
| Urban Ulrych | Applications of Statistical Learning in Quantitative Finance | Walter Farkas | Postdoctoral Researcher, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland |
2021
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Marlon Azinovic | Essays on Computational Macro-Finance | Felix Kübler | First Position: Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Finance, University of Zurich, Switzerland Current Placement: Assistant Professor (Tenure-Track), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA |
| Marco Ceccarelli | Essays on Sustainable Finance | Alexander Wagner | First position: Post-Doctoral Researcher, University of Maastricht, Netherlands Current placement: Assistant Professor, Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam, Netherlands |
| Gazi Kabas | Essays on Household Finance and Empirical Banking | Steven Ongena | Assistant Professor, Tilburg University, Netherlands |
| Philipp Lentner | The effect of monetary policy on covered bonds | Kjell Nyborg | Assistant Professor, WU Vienna, Austria |
| Mrinal Mishra | How Does Financial Intermediation Respond to Varied Shocks? | Steven Ongena | First position: Post-Doctoral Researcher at Department of Finance, University of Zurich, Switzerland Current placement: Assistant Professor, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, Australia |
| Yushi Peng | Applications of New Empirical IO in Banking and Real Estate Economics | Michel Habib | First position: Post-Doctoral Researcher, London School of Economics, UK Current placement: Assistant Professor, Tilburg University, Netherlands |
| Stefano Ramelli | Finance in the Climate Crisis: Preferences, Policies, and Prospects | Alexander Wagner | Assistant Professor, University St. Gallen, Switzerland |
2020
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Andrada Bilan | Three Essays on the Consequences of Financial Market Frictions | Steven Ongena | Research Economist, Swiss National Bank, Bern, Switzerland |
| Luca Mazzone | Leverage, Business Cycles and Human Capital Accumulation | Felix Kübler | First Position: Economist in the EP Program, International Monetary Fund, Washington, USA Current Placement: Assistant Professor, University of Montreal, Canada |
| Chiara Perillo | A macro-financial network perspective to policy analysis | Stefano Battiston | Research Economist, European Central Bank, Frankfurt, Germany |
2019
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Fulvia Fringuellotti | Three Essays on Bank Lending | Steven Ongena | Federal Reserve Bank, New York, USA |
| Runjie (Roger) Geng | Essays in Equilibrium Asset Pricing | Felix Kübler | Assistant Professor in Finance of ICEF at Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia |
| Carlos Vargas | Essays in Sustainable Finance | Marc Chesney | Assistant Professor, EGADE Business School, Mexico |
2018
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Dominika Kryczka | Recursive Equilibria in Non-Optimal Financial Economies | Felix Kübler | European Central Bank (ECB), Germany |
| Inke Nyborg | Wie Banknoten Bargeld wurden. Geld und Notenbanken in der Schweiz im langen 19. Jahrhundert | Urs Birchler | Academic Associate, Department of Finance, UZH, Switzerland |
| Thomas Richter | Trading, Liquidity and Regulation in Sovereign Bond Markets | Per Östberg | First position: UBS, Quantitative Risk Specialist, Switzerland Second position: Professor, Real Estate Management and Finance, ZHAW, Zurich, Switzerland |
2017
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Amelie Brune | Three Essays on Economic Crises | Thorsten Hens | Swiss National Bank, Switzerland |
| Felix Fattinger | The Pricing of Uncertain Information: From the Lab, to Derivatives Markets, to State-contingent Sovereign Debt | Marc Chesney | Assistant Professor, WU Vienna and the VGSF, Austria |
| Lucas Marc Fuhrer | Three Essays on Money and Liquidity | Kjell Nyborg | Swiss National Bank, Switzerland |
| Peter Schmidt | Essays on Financial Market Efficiency | Alexander Wagner | Lecturer, University of Bern, Switzerland |
| Jiri Woschitz | Three Essays on Monetary Policy and Financial Markets | Kjell Nyborg | Associate Professor at the Finance Department, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway |
| Quan Zhang | Limits of Arbitrage and Collateral Constraints | Felix Kübler | Tenure-track Lecturer (Assistant Professor), Lancaster University, UK |
2016
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Sabine Elmiger | On the Robustness of Consumption-Based Asset Pricing | Thorsten Hens | Postdoctoral Researcher, Department of Finance, UZH, Switzerland |
| Diana Festl-Pell | Essays on Banking, Governance and Sustainability | Urs Birchler | Professor of Finance & Accounting, Karlshochschule International University, Germany |
2015
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Manish Gupta | Three Essays in Real Estate and Entrepreneurial Finance | Thorsten Hens | Assistant Professor in Finance, Nottingham University Business School, UK |
| Anca Claudia Pana | Contributions to the Economics of Climate Change Mitigation | Marc Chesney | PostDoc, Harvard, Department of Environmental Economics and Public Policy, USA |
| Falko Paetzold | Three Essays on Sustainable Investing in Private Wealth Management | Marc Chesney | CSP, Department of Banking and Finance, Switzerland |
| Boris Wälchli | Essays on Nonaffine Option Pricing and Random Forests in the Fields of Finance | Walter Farkas | PostDoc, Department of Finance, UZH, Switzerland |
2014
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Ethem Güney | Essays in Banking and Finance | Jean-Charles Rochet | Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey, Turkey |
| Jochen Krause | Mixture Models in Financial Risk Modeling | Marc Paolella | PostDoc, DBF, Switzerland |
| Dörte Kreher | Strict Local Martingales, Random Times and Non-Standard Changes of Probability Measure in Financial Mathematics | Ashkan Nikeghbali | First Position: PostDoc, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany Current Placement: Assistant Professor, Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, Germany |
| Felix Matthys | Three Essays in Quantitative Finance | Markus Leippold | Assistant Professor at ITAM, Mexico |
| Suzanne Ziegler | Bankinsolvenz und Einlegerschutz - Analyse und Beurteilung der Entwicklung in der Schweiz | Urs Birchler | Professor Banking & Finance, ZHAW, Switzerland |
2013
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Erdinc Akyildirim | Essays in Quantitative Finance | Walter Farkas | First Position: Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey Current Placement: Assistant Professor in Banking and Financial Technology, Nottingham University Business School, UK |
| Elise Gourier | Affine and Quadratic Models for Volatility and Interest Rates Markets | Markus Leippold | Associate Professor in Finance, ESSEC Business School, Paris, France |
| Pawel Polak | Forecasting Financial Returns Under Non-Elliptical Distributions with Applications to Portfolio Allocation and Risk Management | Marc Paolella | Assistant Professor, Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, Stony Brook University, USA |
| Zexi Wang | Three Essays on Corporate Cash Policy and Financial Markets | Kjell Nyborg | Assistant Professor of Finance, University of Bern, Switzerland |
2012
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Mario Häfeli | Banking regulation: liquidity measures, capital requirements and deposit insurance | Paolo Vanini | Highschool Teacher, Zurich, Switzerland |
| Matthias Jüttner | Systemic Relevance in Financial Markets and Manufacturing Networks | Paolo Vanini | Swiss National Bank, Switzerland |
2011
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Marc Arnold | Essays on Credit Risk | Alexander Wagner | Professor, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland |
| Jan Wrampelmeyer | Ambiguity, Illiquidity, and Hedge Funds: An Analysis of Recent Developments and Current Research Topics in Post-Crisis Financial Markets | Loriano Mancini | First Position: Associate Professor, University of St. Gallen, Switzerland Current Placement: Associate Professor of Finance at VU Amsterdam, Netherlands |
2010
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Urs Schweri | Life-Cycles of Firms | Thorsten Hens | Schulleitung Schneisingen, Switzerland |
| Songtao Wang | Optimal Capital Structure and Yield Spreads under Liquidity Risk | Rajna Gibson | Professor, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China |
2009
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Mihnea Constantinescu | Risk and return in the Swiss property market | Thorsten Hens | Bank of Lithuania, Lithuania |
| Luca Taschini | An Empirical and Theoretical Study on Emission Permits | Marc Chesney | First Position: PostDoc, London School of Economics, UK Current Placement: Professor and Chair of Climate Change Finance, University of Edinburgh Business School, UK |
2008
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Bogdan Stacescu | Three Essays on Payout Policy | Michel Habib | Associate Professor, BI Norwegian Business School, Oslo, Norway |
2007
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Kremena Bachmann-Damianova | Corporate Financial Reporting and Disclosure - A Behavioral Finance Perspective | Thorsten Hens | First Position: PostDoc, DBF, UZH, Switzerland Current Placement: Professor in Wealth Management, ZHAW School of Management and Law, Switzerland |
| Florian Peters | Essays in Corporate Finance | Michel Habib | Associate Professor of Finance, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands |
2006
| PhD Student | PhD Thesis | Supervisor | Placements |
| Carsten Murawski | Essays in Financial Economics | Rajna Gibson | Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia |
| Rina Rosenblatt- Wisch | Optimal Growth under Loss Aversion | Thorsten Hens | Swiss National Bank, Switzerland |
