Thursday, August 20, 13:30 - 14:30, Audimax

After the outcome of the Greek referendum, the challenges to the monetary, economic, and political union in Europe have increased substantially. Europe has entered another period of turbulent times, increasing uncertainty, and volatile markets. In this environment, critics argue, the combination of slow political decision making and the ECB’s loose monetary policy has deepened the problem instead of solving it.

This panel brings together a fine group of international academics and practitioners who are experts on this topic. The discussion will explore possible causes of Europe’s crisis and elaborate on potential remedies related to monetary policy, the role of financial markets, and the need for real investments. I invite everybody to join us in this hot topic discussion with an internationally eminent set of panelists.

Speakers

Wilhelm Molterer
Vice-President of the European Investment Bank

Wilhelm Molterer has been a Vice-President of the European Investment Bank since 2011. Previously, he was Austria’s Vice Chancellor and Federal Minister of Finance (2007-2008), Federal Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management (1994-2002) and a long-time Member of Parliament (first elected in 1990). He is a member of the Austrian People’s Party, having been its Secretary General (1993-1994), Vice-Chairman (1995-2007), Chairman (2007-2008), and Chairman of its Parliamentary Group (2002-2006).

Ewald Nowotny
Governor of Österreichische Nationalbank

Ewald Nowotny is the Governor of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank (OeNB) and a Member of the Governing Council of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Before taking on his current position in September 2008, Ewald Nowotny held a number of high-level positions in financial institutions. He was the CEO of the Austrian BAWAG P.S.K. banking group from 2006 to 2007, served as Vice-President and Member of the Management Committee of the European Investment Bank (EIB) in Luxembourg from 1999 to 2003, and, between 1971 and 1979, was first a Member and then President of the Governing Board of Österreichische Postsparkasse (P.S.K.). Moreover, from 1992 to 2008, Ewald Nowotny served on the supervisory boards of several banks and corporations and was a member of the ÖNB’s General Council from 2007 to 2008.

Ewald Nowotny was the Vice President of the Austrian Economic Association and is a Member of the University Board of the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
 

Marco Pagano
Professor of Finance at the Università di Napoli Federico II

Marco Pagano is a Professor of Finance at the University of Naples Federico II, President of the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance (EIEF), and the director of the Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF). He holds a B.A. from Cambridge University and a Ph.D. from MIT. From 2004 to 2011 he was the managing editor of the Review of Finance with Josef Zechner, and in 2011 received a 5-year ERC Advanced Grant for a project on “Finance and Labor”. He is Vice-Chair of the Advisory Scientific Committee of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB).

He also advised the Italian Treasury on security market reform (1995-96), and was a member of the Treasury's privatization committee (1997-2001) and of the EU Parliament advisory panel on financial services (2002-04). Most of his research is in the areas of market microstructure, banking and corporate finance. In 2013 he published the book Market Liquidity:  Theory, Evidence and Policy (with Thierry Foucault and Ailsa Roëll) with OUP.

Lubos Pastor
Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Member of the Board of the National Bank of Slovakia

Lubos Pastor is Charles P. McQuaid Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. At Chicago Booth, he also serves as co-director of the Fama-Miller Center for Research in Finance and a member of the CRSP Indexes Advisory Council. Outside Chicago Booth, he is a member of the Bank Board of the National Bank of Slovakia, President-Elect of the Western Finance Association, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy and Research. In the world of academic publishing, he is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance and Journal of Financial Economics, and a former Associate Editor of the Review of Financial Studies.

Professor Pastor’s research focuses mostly on financial markets and asset management. He has written on a broad range of topics such as liquidity risk, political uncertainty, stock price bubbles, stock volatility, return predictability, technological revolutions, portfolio choice, performance evaluation, returns to scale in active management, indexing, and IPOs. He has analyzed various effects of parameter uncertainty and learning in finance. His articles have appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Financial Studies, as well as nonacademic outlets such as Bloomberg and the Financial Times.  His research has been awarded numerous prizes, such as two Smith Breeden Prizes, two Fama/DFA Prizes, Whitebox Advisors Selected Research Prize, Goldman Sachs Asset Management Prize, Barclays Global Investors Prize, Rothschild Caesarea Center Best Paper Award, Jacobs Levy Center Best Paper Prize, two Geewax, Terker & Co. Prizes, Marshall Blume Prize, the NASDAQ Award, and the Q Group Award.

Moderator

Josef Zechner
Professor of Finance at the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business

Josef Zechner is a professor of finance and investments at the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business and the speaker of the PhD Program Vienna Graduate School of Finance (VGSF). Before joining the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, he was Professor of Finance at the University of Vienna.

Josef Zechner has published in leading finance and economics journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies or the Journal of Political Economy. He was the Managing Editor of the Review of Finance (joint with Marco Pagano) from 2003 to 2012. He is also past president of the European Finance Association, the German Finance Association and the Western Finance Association. He is a full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, holds a honorary doctoral degree from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich and is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR).

His research covers a broad range of topics in the areas of corporate finance, banking and asset management. Prof. Zechner has consulted for several financial institutions and is a member of the scientific board of Spängler IQAM Invest, an Austrian Asset Management Company.