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Department of Finance

Theses

Procedure

The preparation for the application as well as the writing of the Bachelor or Master's thesis at the Department of Finance entails different steps, whereby the application process is described in detail here.

  1. Search respectively application for topics: You have the following two options:
    1. You find your own topic, write a Research Proposal and submit it via DF Thesis Market.
    2. Choose one of the provided Topic Proposals and apply for the corresponding topic on the DF Thesis Market including a letter of motivation.
  2. Supervisor: If your Research Proposal has been accepted or your application for an existing topic has been successful, you will be contacted by the person who will supervise you in your thesis. Based on your Research Proposal inputs, your supervisor will formulate the thesis assignment.
  3. Thesis assignment on OLAT: The task assignment includes your official thesis assignment for the written thesis. It can be collected on OLAT from the moment you have been informed by your supervisor. Once you collect the thesis assignment on OLAT, the time limit of six months starts.
  4. Time limit: Start working on your thesis early and discuss problems with your supervisor. Nevertheless, remember that a Bachelor or Master’s thesis is to be written independently.
  5. Submission: You must submit your thesis via OLAT i.e. you upload your thesis and any additional documents/attachments as a ZIP-file to OLAT.
  6. Grading of task: You receive your grade within a month after submission.

The following Video in German shows the recording of a presentation (PDF, 276 KB) in which the students were informed. It goes more into detail about the individual steps.

The prerequisite for writing a Bachelor and Master's thesis at the Department of Finance is relevant prior knowledge in the corresponding subject area. In particular, the relevant lectures must have been attended and passed. Provided Topic Proposals may contain further requirements, which you will find in the respective proposal.

It is also important that the rules and instructions of the Dean's Office (study and graduation) are generally to be noted. The responsibility regarding compliance with these regulations lies with you.

Application

In order to write a thesis at the Department of Finance, a digital application via the DF Thesis Market is required. You will need the following documents for the application:

  • Curriculum Vitae (as PDF)
  • Transcript of records (as PDF, current export from the Module Booking)
  • Research Proposal (if you propose a topic of your own)

For the application via the Department of Finance Thesis Market, you also need your UZH login credentials (shortname and password).

There are two ways to apply for a thesis at the Department of Finance:

Option A: Own topic

Elaborate your own suggested topic and write a Research Proposal. On two to three pages, the Research Proposal summarises your motivation, the objectives, the planned procedure and the expected results. The following documents serve as a guide:

If you would like to write an empirical paper, check before submitting your application whether the data you need can be found in the available databases. It is advisable to check with a concrete example whether the data quality is sufficient (e.g., availability of time series).

It is important that you assign your Research Proposal to the correct research area so that it can be made available to appropriate supervisors. The research areas and fields of interest listed in the table below can serve as a decision-making aid. The links of the Professors lead to the Bachelor and Master's theses that they supervised so far. They can give an intuition on typical topics for writing a thesis.

 

Based on your Research Proposal, the final thesis assignment will be issued. However, the Department of Finance reserves the right to ask for improvements to the proposal, to make changes, to provide a different topic or to reject the application.

Option B: Provided topic

Apply for a topic provided by a supervisor via DF Thesis Market. Look at the topics on the marketplace, choose one and apply. Note that in addition to a CV and transcript of records, a short letter of motivation is also required for the application. Describe how the provided topic matches your skills and interests, and how the topic fits into your course of study.

Useful documents

As guidance to help you estimate the length of a thesis, we provide you with two sample theses:

Additionally you can find a template for LaTeX (ZIP, 414 KB).

Further notes

The Department of Finance strongly recommends that you start finding a topic for your Bachelor or Master's thesis at an early stage. The application must be submitted at least one month before the desired starting month. For example if you want to start writing your thesis at the beginning of May, you must apply by the end of March. 

The matching process usually takes about a month, sometimes longer (especially for your own proposals), since all supervisors supervise several theses, and your own proposal must match the interests of your supervisor in terms of content. We will inform you as soon as the matching process is completed, or if we need further information or adjustments from you. If you want/need to start as soon as possible, you also have the option to apply to one of the posted proposals.

The DF endeavours to offer all applicants the opportunity to write a thesis at the Department of Finance, but we cannot guarantee a specific topic or a specific supervisor. Temporary bottlenecks may occur in the supervision. If you have any questions or problems in connection with your application, please contact the study coordinator and Managing Director of the DF, Dr. Benjamin Wilding, at theses@df.uzh.ch.

Research interest

 

Research interest

Remarks

Banking & Insurance

 

 

Christoph Basten

Banking und Regulierung

Guidelines for Academic Papers (PDF, 97 KB)

Pablo Koch

Insurance and Mathematical Finance

 

Steven Ongena

Banking

 

Corporate Finance

 

 

Michel Habib

Corporate Finance, Organisation Theory, Financial Intermediation

 

Kjell Nyborg

Liquidity, Money Markets, Banking; Financial Auctions; Corporate Finance; Taxes and Cost of Capital.

English only.

Please send us together with your application an outline of approx. 2 pages A4 summarizing your planned thesis.

For further information look up the file for Bachelor and Master Theses at Chair Nyborg (PDF, 124 KB)

Per Östberg

Corporate Finance, Investments, Liquidity

 

Alexander Wagner

Corporate Finance and Governance, Sustainable Finance, Behavioral Finance, Communication, Experimental Economics, Political Economy

Zitierstandard (Journal of Finance) (PDF, 83 KB)

Financial Economics

 

 

Thorsten Hens

Financial Economics, Behavioral Finance

 

Felix Kübler

Computational Economics, General Equilibrium Theory, Portfolio Choice

 

Yucheng Yang Macroeconomics, Finance, and Machine Learning  

Stefan Zeisberger

Behavioral Finance, Experimental Finance, FinTech, Financial Advice, Risk Communication, Investor Psychology & Decision Making

 

Quantitative Finance

 

 

Walter Farkas

Mathematical Finance and Quantitative Risk Management

More information and topics

Markus Leippold

Asset Pricing, Asset Allocation, Quantitative Finance, Financial Engineering.

 

Marc Paolella

Multivariate Modeling, Financial Asset Return, Portfolio Optimization, Use of Statistical and Machine Learning Methods for Prediction

 

Sustainable Finance

 

 

Stefano Battiston

Sustainable Finance, Financial Network Models, Financial Contagion, Climate Risk in Finance, Impact Investing.

 

Marc Chesney

Microfinance, Financial Sector Development, Impact and Sustainable Investing, Sustainable and Responsible Finance, Environmental Finance

 

Zacharias Sautner    

Carmen Tanner

Moral/Ethical Decision Making and Behavior, Ethical/Responsible Leadership, Moral Intelligence, Behavioral Business Ethics & Organisational Culture

 

 

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