Luis de Guindos: Ralph Koijen's contribution to research on the pricing of risk in equity and insurance markets

Remarks by Mr Luis de Guindos, Vice-President of the European Central Bank, at the virtual ceremony awarding the 2020 Germán Bernácer Prize to Ralph Koijen, Frankfurt am Main, 22 November 2021.

The views expressed in this speech are those of the speaker and not the view of the BIS.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I am delighted to join you today to award the 2020 Germán Bernácer Prize to Ralph Koijen, Professor of Finance at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. Ralph is a deserving recipient of the Bernácer Prize, which is awarded each year to an outstanding young European economist working in the fields of macroeconomics and finance.

Ralph is a renowned scholar with a wide-ranging research agenda, covering both theoretical and empirical work. The numerous prizes he has won throughout his career, including awards for "best paper published" in several top journals, testify to the academic quality of his contributions. Ralph's research – being right at the intersection of macroeconomics and finance – is also highly policy-relevant, as I will highlight today.

I will focus on two areas to which Ralph has made key contributions: new insights in asset pricing and the insurance business. This means leaving aside many other important contributions, for example on identification in empirical models, on the term structure of interest rates and equity yields, and on investment management and asset allocation strategies.