Urs Birchler

Professor of Banking at the Department for Banking and Finance, Zürich University

Urs Birchler is Professor of Banking at the Department for Banking and Finance at Zürich University, having previously worked at the Swiss National Bank, where he was Director of the Financial Stability Unit, and having previously been a member of the Bank’s Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and Chairman of its Basel Committee Research Task Force. His university teaching commitments have dealt with the theory of financial intermediation, banking and banking regulation, financial stability, game theory and economics of information, and have included appointments at the Universities of Zurich, St Gallen, Bern, Lausanne and Leipzig. His research has also focused strongly on banking, bank insolvency law and deposit protection, and recently he has co-authored a policy report on the “Implicit Government Guarantee for Big Banks” and a textbook on “Information Economics” (2007 with Monika Bütler). His policy focus is bank resolution, bail-in, and the TBTF problem. He is also an active blogger on www.batz.ch – the forum for Swiss economy policy.