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Welcome to the personal website of Dr. Christoph Basten, FRM.
Starting July 2024, I work as Senior Lead Economist on bank lending conditions at the European Central Banks's DG Monetary Policy.
In 2017-24 I was Assistant Professor of Banking in the Department of Finance 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 was 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.
Beyond policy work and teaching, my work in recent years has focused on researching 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 bank product pricing, monetary policy transmission, and bank liquidity risks. For a (relatively) non-technical summary of first findings, see here.
Earlier research of mine has amongst others 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, insurance against global warming related Natural Catastrophes, and the effects of tax policy on house prices.
Recent News:
July 2024: After 7 years as banking professor, I am now back to policy in the Monetary Analysis division of 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.
November 2023: Presenting my Agenda on Cross-Selling in Banking at the Constance Seminar in Empirical Microeconomics on November 16.
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 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!
March 2023: Join us on April 3-5 at the Swiss Winter Conference on Financial Intermediation, which I'm co-organizing in Gerzensee this year! Program and details on how to join through Zoom available here.
February 2023: Check out our new SFI Working Paper! Merike Kukk (Eesti Pank), Jan Toczynski (UZH) and myself on how household financial choices and hence future inflation respond to current personal inflation exposure beyond the "headline inflation" of the "representative consumer" reported in most media and central bank communication!
December 2022: Our work on cross-selling in bank household relationships has now been invited for a revision by the Review of Financial Studies.
November 2022: If you have interesting research on financial intermediation, consider submitting it for our Swiss Winter Conference on Financial intermediation by November 18!
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.
August 2022: Our work on the role of cross-selling for banks and financial systems is now out as SFI Paper No 22-65.
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.
March 2022: The program for the Swiss Winter Conference on Financial Intermediation (SWCFI), which I co-organize for April 3-6, is now ready, see here.
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).