About Sascha Steffen

Sascha Steffen is Vice President for Research and a professor of finance at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, and the director of Financial Intermediaries and the Real Economy (FIRE) — a research-led think tank dedicated to understanding the important challenges facing financial markets and the economy. Sascha is an international speaker, a media expert, and an adviser to government agencies and the private sector on banking, financial stability and corporate credit markets.

Currently, Sascha is investigating the implications of the COVID-19 pandemic for banks and firms, as well as the role of fiscal and monetary policy in this context. He is also principal investigator of the project “AI & Monetary Policy,” which is driven by questions such as the role of monetary policy and banks in climate change. This project is funded with about €1 million from the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi). It is part of the “Financial Big Data Cluster,” a joint effort with other academic institutions, industry leaders, and start-ups to improve the depth of financial market data and increase the effectiveness of financial decision-making by using tools such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Sascha’s research is motivated by real world questions, and he aims to provide new and innovative perspectives on central issues facing economies and markets. The common themes in his research center on credit markets as a source for economic growth but also systemic risk, the role of banks and “shadow banks” in financial stability, and the effectiveness of financial market regulation and monetary policy for the globalization of credit markets.

He is an advocate for stronger cooperation between academia and industry as a means to find more innovative answers to global challenges, and frequently partners with government agencies and the private sector on research initiatives. As an empirical researcher, Sascha aspires to unearth interesting empirical relationships in his original research, as well as data from industry partners. His research is informed by constant dialogue and collaboration with academics, regulators and policy makers, and industry leaders. Those conversations expand the possible implications of his work, provide the opportunities to learn about new challenges, and push the boundaries on how to think about them. 

Before joining Frankfurt School, Sascha was a professor of finance at the University of Mannheim between 2016 and 2017 and the director of the financial markets group at the Center for European Economic Research (ZEW). Previously, he was a professor of finance at the European School of Management & Technology (ESMT). While serving as an associate editor at multiple academic journals, he is also a panel member at Economic Policy, a leading policy journal in Europe. His research has been published in the top finance journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies.