Christian Thomann

Christian Thomann is Associate Professor of Corporate Finance at KTH Royal Institute of Technology. He is also a Visiting Research Fellow at the Swedish House of Finance and an affiliated researcher at the House of Sustainable Society, both at the Stockholm School of Economics. His research focuses on corporate finance, environmental policy, and risk management, with particular interests in how firms respond to carbon pricing, environmental regulation, technical change, and insurance-related risks.

From 2010 to 2022, Thomann worked at the Swedish Ministry of Finance, where he was a senior advisor in the Tax and Customs Department. From 2017 to 2021, he was Vice Chair of the OECD Working Party on Tax Policy Analysis. He is currently one of Sweden’s three government-appointed members of the Nordic Tax Research Council. He holds a PhD and a habilitation from Leibniz University Hannover, and a Diplom-Wirtschaftsingenieur degree from the University of Karlsruhe (TH), now Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT).

His research has been published or is forthcoming in leading journals, including two articles in the Review of Financial Studies, the Annual Review of Financial Economics, the Journal of Corporate Finance, the Journal of Risk and Insurance, and the Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization.

Publications

• Private Equity Ownership and Firm Performance: A Framework for Interpreting the Evidence
  with Per Strömberg
  Annual Review of Financial Economics (accepted)
  Earlier version circulated as an ECGI Finance Working Paper and CEPR Discussion Paper. 

• The Effect of Carbon Pricing on Firm Emissions: Evidence from the Swedish CO2 Tax  
  with Gustav Martinsson, Laszlo Sajtos and Per Strömberg
  Review of Financial Studies (2024),  37 (6),  1848–1886

Academic Insight by MISUM (Stockholm School of Economics)
Non-academic summary (Stockholm University)
Non-academic summary (KTH, Royal Institute of Technology). Even here:  Koldioxidskatt är ett effektivt sätt att minska utsläpp - | forskning.se
Interactive visualization of key results and Designing a Carbon Tax Policy that Works (Stockholm School of Economics and Datastory)
Op-ed in SvD that builds on central findings: Debattörer: Statligt stöd avgörande för industri­omställning | SvD Debatt

Financial Times lists article as "Academic research with impact, highly recommended" Link to FT article

• Can Environmental Policy Encourage Technical Change? Emissions Taxes and R&D Investment in Polluting Firms
  with James R. Brown and Gustav Martinsson
  Review of Financial Studies (2022), 35(10), 4518-4560

Non-academic summary  (Swedish House of Finance)
Discussion of key results (KTH, Royal Institute of Technology)

Academic Insight by MISUM  (Stockholm School of Economics)

Financial Times lists article as "Academic research with real-world impact: highly commended"  Link to  FT article

• Government Lending in a Crisis
  with James R. Brown and Gustav Martinsson
  Journal of Corporate Finance (2021) 71

Non-academic summary (Swedish House of Finance)

Swedish Audit Office (Riksrevisionen) uses methodology to assess effectiveness of tax deferrals during COVID and arrives at similar results.
Article by Swedish House of Finance on the report. 

• Are bad times good news for the Securities and Exchange Commission?  
  with Tim Lohse   
  European Journal of Law and Economics (2015) 40 (1), 33-47 

• Pay inequity effects on back-office employees’ job performances: the case of a large insurance firm
  with Y Zhang and  O Fabel,
  Central European Journal of Operations Research 23 (2), 421-439

• Public Enforcement of Securities Market Rules: Resource-based evidence from the Securities Exchange Commission  
  with Tim Lohse   and  Razvan  Pascalau
  Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization (2014) 106, 197-212 

• Redistributional consequences of early childhood intervention
  with Tim Lohse  and Peter Lutz
  The European Journal of Health Economics (2013) 14 (3), 373-381 

• The impact of catastrophes on insurer stock volatility
  Journal of Risk and Insurance (2013) 80 (1), 65-94

• Corporate management of highly dynamic risks: Evidence from the demand for terrorism insurance in Germany
  with  Razvan  Pascalau and J-Matthias Graf von der Schulenburg
  The Geneva Risk and Insurance Review  (2012)  37 (1), 57-82 

Working Papers

• Carbon Pricing and Investment
  with James R. Brown, Gustav Martinsson and Per Stromberg
  CEPR Discussion Paper No. 21716 

• Financing Constraints and Risk Management: Evidence From Micro-Level Insurance Data,
  IFN Working Paper No. 1452, with Emil Bustos, Oliver Engist and Gustav Martinsson

• Decarbonizing without Clean Technology: Lessons from the Trucking Industry
  with Gustav Martinsson and Per Stromberg

Link to summary of findings (SNS report, in Swedish)

Current Research Grants
Currently, Christian Thomann's research projects are supported by grants from FORMAS, Marianne och Marcus Wallenbergs Foundation, Digital Futures, Trafikverket and Jan Wallanders och Tom Hedelius stiftelse. 

Earlier research was funded by Nasdaq and Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council).

In collaboration with the City of Stockholm's captive insurance company St Erik we are investigating how to reduce insured losses in residential properties. (Link to project and information about project by KTH)