Reorganization of Financial Systems
Friday, 16. October 2015 | 9:15 Uhr
Speaker
Organisation
Abstract
Reorganization of the Financial System
The recent financial crisis has revealed many short comings of the existing financial System. Both in the design a well as in the enforcement of laws, rules and regulations.
Incentives of people working in the financial industry were tuned towards excessive risk taking without a long term perspective.
Moreover, many of those activities were hidden in special investment vehicles, dark pools and other areas of shadow banking.
A rigorous reform has been started to correct this misbehavior. Moreover, currently radical new forms of banking evolved as a reaction to the financial crisis: bitcoin, a peer to peer transaction method, crowd funding, wikifolio, robo advisers and a rich set of apps taking over traditional roles of the financial market. I argue that with respect to financial stability one should not be too optimistic about this electronic financial revolution, called fintech. Since the underlying source of misbehavior in the financial industry and other areas of the economy origins in deep routed human behavior it is to be expected that also this new world will create its bubbles and crashes, as has already been seen for bitcoins. Bubbles and crashes are a fact of live independent of the financial system. Besides simple and rigorous regulation a good education of the people participating in the financial system is needed.
Thorsten Hens
| 1981 | Abitur, Engelbert von Berg Gymnasium, Wipperfürth |
| 1984 | Pre-Diploma in Computer Science, Bonn University |
| 1988 | Diploma in Economics, Bonn University |
| 1992 | PhD, Bonn University (European Doctoral Programme) |
| 1996 | Habilitation, Bonn University |
| 1984 – 1988 | Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Business Administration and Economics Department, Bonn University |
| 1988- 1992 | Research Assistant and Lecturer, Economics Department II (Prof. Werner Hildenbrand), Bonn University |
| 1993 | January – August, Visiting Assistant Professor, Economics Department, Stanford University (USA) |
| 1992- 1996 | Assistant Professor, Economics Department II (Prof. Werner Hildenbrand), Bonn University |
| 1999 | February – March, Visiting Professor for Economics, CERMSEM, Paris 1 |
| 1996- 1999 | Professor for Economic Theory, University of Bielefeld, Germany |
| 1999- 2006 | Full Professor for Financial Markets and Monetary Macroeconomics, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich |
| 2001 | Adjunct Professor for Financial Economics, Department of Finance, Norwegian School of Economics, Bergen, Norway |
| 2006 | Full Professor for Financial Economics, Department of Banking and Finance, University of Zurich |
