Raghuram G. Rajan was announced as the prize winner in February 2013. Jürgen Fitschen, Co-CEO Deutsche Bank AG, presents the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 2013 to Rajan during an award ceremony prior to the symposium. Douglas Diamond, Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, will give the laudation.
Jury Chairman and CFS Director Michael Haliassos said: “We are very proud to have gathered some of the world’s most distinguished researchers for our symposium in honor of Raghuram G. Rajan. The readiness with which the speakers accepted the invitation of CFS, as well as Rajan´s recent appointment as Governor of the Reserve Bank of India are testimony for his academic excellence and the policy-shaping impact of his research.”
Jürgen Fitschen, Co-Chief Executive Officer Deutsche Bank AG, emphasized: “It would have been hard to find a more deserving winner for this year’s award. Professor Rajan's career is not only marked by path-breaking, empirically-based research, but even more important is the fact that he never shied away from the real world of complex policy issues and special interests.”
Raghuram G. Rajan’s broad research interests include banking, corporate finance, and the role of finance in economic development. Rajan is Governor of the Reserve Bank of India since 4 September 2013. He was one of the few economists who warned the world about the financial crisis that eventually broke out in 2008.
“I am honored that a jury of such respected academic colleagues has awarded me with this prize. I also thank my colleagues, both from academia and from the central banking community, for participating in the seminar organized by the Center for Financial Studies. This is a time of great uncertainty in global financial markets, and it was good to discuss academic theory and policy practice in such times,” said Rajan.
Rajan’s work spans a remarkably broad range of areas in financial economics most important to the development of economies worldwide, ranging from the central role of banks in creating liquidity and the role of finance in economic growth to the nature of corporations and their financing. His penetrating analysis of the changing growth experience during the postwar era and of the differences in the nature of the crises faced by the United States and by Southern Europe is essential reading for understanding the current policy dilemmas between austerity and growth facing both sides of the Atlantic.
Raghuram G. Rajan is Governor of the Reserve Bank of India (since September 2013). Previously, he was Chief Economic Adviser in the Finance Ministry, Government of India and Eric J. Gleacher Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Before that, he was Chief Economist and Director of Research at the International Monetary Fund (2003 – 2006). Professor Rajan served as the President of the American Finance Association in 2011. He is a member of the Group of Thirty and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Rajan has been elected by a Jury of internationally renowned experts in financial research and practice. Members of the international Jury, alongside the Chairman Michael Haliassos, include (in alphabetical order) Professors Ricardo Caballero (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), David Folkerts-Landau (Deutsche Bank’s Group Chief Economist, Global Head of Market Research and member of the Group Executive Committee), Nicola Fuchs-Schündeln (Goethe University), Otmar Issing (CFS President) and Jan Pieter Krahnen (CFS Director). Furthermore, the Jury includes Robert C. Merton (Nobel Prize Winner; Massachusetts Institute of Technology), the winner of the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics 2011, Kenneth Rogoff (Harvard University), Raman Uppal (EDHEC Business School) and Uwe Walz (CFS Director).
About the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics
The academic Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics is sponsored by the Deutsche Bank Donation Fund and carries an endowment of €50,000. The CFS awards the prize biannually in partnership with Goethe University Frankfurt. The Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics honors internationally renowned economic researchers whose work has a marked influence on research concerning questions of financial economics and macroeconomics, and has led to fundamental advances in economic theory and practice.
The prize was awarded for the first time in 2005 to Eugene F. Fama, Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago, for researching the concept of individual rationality in financial market behavior. In 2007 Michael Woodford, Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University, received the prize for his groundbreaking redefinition of monetary analysis. In 2009 Robert J. Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale University and Professor of Finance at Yale School of Management, received the prize for his constructive challenge of rationality and promotion of behavioral considerations. Kenneth Rogoff, Professor of Economics and Professor of Public Policy at Harvard University in Cambridge, USA, received the prize in 2011 for his analysis of financial crises.
About the Center for Financial Studies
The Center for Financial Studies (CFS) is a financially independent research institute, affiliated to Goethe University Frankfurt. CFS conducts independent and internationally-oriented research on financial markets, financial intermediaries and monetary economics and interacts as the German partner with other international research centers specifically on the subject of financial market architecture and the role played by banks and stock exchanges. President of CFS is Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Otmar Issing. Chairman of the supporting association: Dr. Rolf-E. Breuer. Overall management of the institute is conducted by the directors Prof. Michael Haliassos, Ph.D., Prof. Dr. Jan Pieter Krahnen, Prof. Dr. Uwe Walz.
