I am interested in big picture questions in political economy, macrofinance, banking and corporate finance, organization theory, and historical discontinuities in legal and financial history. I am currently working on structural breaks in our growth process in the last decades, leading to increasing inequality and financial stagnation.   

As you may see my interests are terribly broad, I admit my exuberance. I am lucky I can pursue interesting and diverse questions, yet still manage to hold down a paying job.

As life battered my ideals (just as it probably did with yours), I became somewhat disciplined. I am no longer boldly going where none has ever gone before, starting lots of projects. My interests now cluster around puzzling trends: a rising demand for safety, a highly redistributive growth process and their combined effect on financial stagnation. 

I think these are interesting and novel ideas, and perhaps for that very reason nearly impossible to publish in a scientific journal (see my piece with Robin Doettling on redistributive growth).

Yet, real world people are curious about them. Vox populis, vox Dei !

Proof is, a big research grant from an open competition in the social sciences and humanities to work on redistributive growth. This is amazing, since humanities and social scientists tend to resent economists as know-it-all using extreme assumptions on human behavior. I guess my project relies on what people think are more plausible assumptions.   

 

So I take it as a sign of relevance, and now seek a larger audience than scientific journal referees with whom I engaged for thirty years.

I see this as a natural evolution in a research career focused on public purposes, serving over the years as advisor at the World Bank, IMF, the European Commission, and central banks such as the ECB, Fed, Bank of England and DNB. I am presently active as member of the ESRB Advisory Research Council at the ECB, where we tackle concrete policy challenges and seek perspective on long term stability issues.