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Welcome to the personal website of Dr. Christoph Basten, FRM.

I am a Senior Lead Economist at the European Central Bank. This site summarizes my research and any views expressed here are my own.

In 2017-24 I was Assistant Professor at the University of Zurich (UZH), fixed-term-financed by the Research Priority Program Financial Market Regulation. In that period, I was also a Visiting Scholar at the NYU Stern School of Business in fall 2021.

Prior to that, I worked as a Risk Manager at the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA. 

In all three positions I built on B.A. studies of Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at Oxford, M.Sc. studies of Economics at Pompeu Fabra University, and Ph.D. studies in Economics at the European University Institute and as a Visiting Scholar at Harvard. 

Further information is available amongst others on my LinkedIn profile, on my ECB webpage, my old UZH web page, my Google Scholar profile,  my ORCID profile, or my SSRN profile.

A primary research focus of mine in recent years has been how Cross-Selling allows banks to maximize the profits from each client rather than from each product, and how the resulting connections between the asset and liability sides of bank balance sheets change banks' product pricing, monetary policy transmission, and risk management.

Earlier research of mine analyzed the first application of the Basel III macro-prudential tool "Counter-Cyclical Capital Buffer", the first use of Negative Interest Rate Policy with Tiered Remuneration, mortgage lending through FinTech platforms and insurance against global warming related Natural Catastrophes.

I have also published on amongst others the effects of tax policy on house prices, the effects of immigration on labor markets and on housing and mortgage markets, precautionary saving to cover unemployment episodes, and unemployment insurance.

Recent News:

November 2025: In a new VoxEU column, ECB Research Bulletin and SUERF Policy Brief, R. Juelsrud and myself explain how the multi-product, multi-period character of banking ("cross-selling") explains incomplete pass-through from monetary policy to deposit rates, as well as why banks offer loss-making deposit rates in times of low or negative policy rates. Don't miss out!

October: On Oct. 27, I am presenting at the ChaMP workshop in Malta my research joint with D. Cucic and G. Schepens on "Market-Priced Savings" (MPS), i.e. on non-deposit financial assets including stocks, bonds and funds.

June 2025: Research joint with Merike Kukk (Eesti Pank) and Jan Toczynski (QMU London) "Beyond the Headline: How Personal Inflation Exposure Shapes Households’ Financial Choices", has been accepted by the Journal of Monetary Economics. It shows individuals to adjust consumption and saving to personal beyond headline inflation.

March 2025: Check out program and live stream of the Swiss Financial Intermediation Conference I am co-organizing in Gerzensee this March 30 - April 2!

July 2024: After 7 years as banking professor, I am now back to policy at the European Central Bank.

May 2024: May 5-8 shall see the Swiss Conference on Financial Intermediation which I co-organize with Martin Brown, Andreas Fuster and Sebastian Doerr at Gerzensee. For those who can't make it onsite, sessions will be live-streamed.

April 2024: Presenting "Monetary Policy Transmission through Cross-Selling Banks", joint with R. Juelsrud, at the Inaugural Conference of the Eurosystem network "Challenges for Monetary Policy Transmission" on April 25.  Presentation videos available also ex post here.

October 2023: Highlights this month include an invited discussion at the ECB-IMF Conference on Macroprudential Policy (Oct 17-18), and a paper presentation at at 2023 Münster Workshop on Banking Research (Oct 27-28).

September 2023: Visiting NYU Stern until the UZH semester start.

August 2023b: In the Review of Financial Studies (RFS) here, R. Juelsrud and myself have just published work establishing the importance of cross-selling in bank relationships. Check out the findings and the many implications this has for households, firms, banks and policy-makers!

August 2023: The new SFI Roundup, to which I contributed a small portion of the insights, discusses prospects for the Swiss Real Estate market.

July 2023: Presenting on July 7 at the "Money and Finance Research" (MoFiR) Conference in Naples, and on August 23 at the CEPR ES Conference of Financial Intermediation in Athens!

June 2023: Presenting on June 2 at the FIRS Conference in Vancouver!

May 2023: On May 10, Professors Mettler, Ongena and myself will be discussing our updated SFI Meta Index on Financial Regulation here.

April 2023: Join Alexander Wagner and myself for an interesting discussion on crisis resilience of Swiss finance at the UZH Center for Crisis Competence on April 25!

October 2022: I look forward to presenting ongoing work on FinTech at the upcoming FinTech Symposium of the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) on November 7-8.

September 2022: I present at the Federal Reserve Board on Sep. 14 and at the FDIC Bank Research Conference on Sep. 15/16, both onsite in Washington, DC.

July 2022: On July 1, I present at the WEA-IBEFA in Portland, OR.

June 2022: I organize an UZH Conference on Banks and Central Banks on June 15.

May 2022: On June 10, I discuss the future of Swiss banking with former Swiss foreign minister Micheline Calmy-Rey and with Blockchain and Fintech expert Ante Plazibat upon invitation of Switzerland's biggest provider of banking software Finnova.

April 2022: We present our updated SFI Global Financial Regulation Index at the "Fédération des Entreprises Romandes Genève" (FER) in Geneva on April 27.

January 2022: After my Fall Semester visit of NYU Stern School of Business, I am now back in Zurich and looking forward to upcoming seminar presentations at the SNB (February 4), IMF (February 7), UZH (February 28), FINMA (March 22), SWCFI (April 4), ECB (May 10), SFI  (13 June), UFSP Financial Market Regulation, WEA-IBEFA (1 July).