Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics

Presentation of the prize in September 2015: Jan P. Krahnen (Chairman of the Jury and Director of the CFS), Stephen A. Ross and Jürgen Fitschen (Co-CEO of Deutsche Bank) (left to right)

The Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 2015 went to Professor Stephen A. Ross. “The Jury has chosen Professor Stephen A. Ross for his groundwork and fundamental contributions to the analytical development of financial economics,” said Jury Chairman and CFS Director Jan Pieter Krahnen. “For more than 25 years major models developed by him have marked the economic world. His models relate to the theory of asset pricing, the analysis of the term structure of interest rates, understanding option prices, and the basic structure of the principal-agent problem. The work of Stephen A. Ross has shaped today’s thinking in financial innovation, practice, and policy.”

Stephen A. Ross is the Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics at the MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Sloan School of Management and has held academic appointments at other renowned universities such as Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton School). Aside from pursuing a distinguished university career, Stephen A. Ross, who holds a PhD in Economics from Harvard, has worked as an advisor to the financial sector, major corporations, and government departments.

Raghuram G. Rajan is the Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Raghuram G. Rajan’s work spans a remarkably broad range of areas in financial economics most important to the development of economies worldwide. These include the impact of financial development on growth, banking and financial crises, as well as corporate finance and governance. His work develops novel empirical and theoretical approaches with significant policy implications.

Kenneth Rogoff is Professor of Economics at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA. His empirical and theoretical works and analysis of economic history cover subjects including exchange rate research, the credibility of monetary policy and the independence of central banks, sovereign debt restructuring and the history of financial crises. They are therefore highly relevant for understanding and addressing current, global challenges.

The US economist has done pioneering work in the field of financial economics with his research on the dynamics of asset prices. His findings on stock price volatility, the emergence of price bubbles and the resulting crises, and the distribution of macroeconomic risks are not only of great scientific importance, but also groundbreaking in practice. In 2013, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for these contributions. Robert J. Shiller is Professor of Economics at Yale University and Professor of Finance at the International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management.

The Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University in New York is one of the most renowned scholars in the field of monetary economics worldwide. He received the Deutsche Bank Prize for his seminal contributions to the theory and practical analysis of monetary policy. Woodford developed a theory of monetary macroeconomics that is rigorously grounded in microeconomics. Woodford proved its high practical utility by analysing the central role of expectations and communication in the implementation of monetary policy.