Climate Governance
Climate Finance
Environmental Economics
Green Industrial Transformation
Nature Finance
2017 - 2020 Doctor of Sciences, ETH Zurich
2014 - 2017 MA Economics, University of Zurich
2010 - 2013 BSc Psychology, University of Zurich
Spring semester 2021/22/23: MIA Consultancy Project, master course, semester course
Fall semester 2021/22/23/24: The role of finance in tackling climate change, master course (jointly with Dr. Florian Egli), block course
Fall semester 2023: Climate.Now, bachelor course, MOOC
Institutional Foundations of Industrialization, Financialization, and Globalization of the Swiss Economy. Evidence from 140 Years of the Commercial Registry
Funded by SNSF with a Sinergia Grant
The objective of the project is to create a comprehensive database on the 140-year history of all companies in Switzerland, including the different stages in the life of a company, from its founding to its dissolution (including relocations, changes in legal form, mergers and acquisitions,…). We will identify each company and follow it across time and space, and reconstruct groups of related companies, national or foreign, active in Switzerland.
This project replaced my IPF project ‘Constraint or opportunity: the energy transition and Swiss firms’ lifes and deaths, 1883 - 2020’. With the new database I will, amongst other research questions, analyze the relationship between historic agglomeration of energy firms and policymaking and how ownership patterns of firms drive the energy transition in Switzerland. Project Website
What Explains Ambitious Climate Policy? Comparing Updated Climate Targets and Covid-19 Recovery Packages and Their Drivers
Funded by the Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS)
For climate change mitigation, the beginning of the 2020s represents a crucial moment. National climate targets have been updated for the first time in the ratcheting up process of the Paris Agreement. Simultaneously, countries have developed unprecedented COVID-19 economic recovery packages. These packages may entrench or upset the current carbon-intensive economic system, depending on absolute amounts and shares of public finance pledged to low-carbon vs. fossil fuel-intensive sectors and infrastructure. This coincidence offers the unique opportunity to compare countries’ symbolic ambitions in climate policy target-setting with the “ad-hoc implementation” of climate ambition in economic stimulus packages. Together with a consortium of researchers from ETH Zurich, the University of Berkley and IISD I analyze what political and economic drivers can explain country differences in climate ambition of national climate targets and recovery packages. The work package I focus on is the role of international financial institutions. Project Website
2024: Responsible Business Education Award of the Financial Times (for the paper Consistent and replicable estimation of bilateral climate finance): Financial Times Academic Research Award
2023: One out the Top 10 Outstanding AI solutions in SDGs selected by the International Research Centre on Artificial Intelligence (IRCAI) under the Auspices of UNESCO (for the publication Consistent and replicable estimation of bilateral climate finance): IRCAI Global Top 100 Report
2023: Impact Award, University of St.Gallen (for the publication Consistent and replicable estimation of bilateral climate finance): Video about the project