Finance professor awarded major grant by ERC

Professor Ralph Koijen has received a grant of more than £900,000 from the European Research Council (ERC).

More than 4,000 applicants across Europe applied for this competitive round of research grants from the ERC. Professor Koijen will use the grant (£901,801.77) to conduct a five-year research programme on ‘Empirical Macro-Finance and the Financial Economics of Insurance Markets’.

Discussing the impact the grant will have on his research, Professor Koijen said: "These are interesting times to work on issues in investments and insurance markets. The ERC grant represents a tremendous opportunity for me to work on some of the key questions in these areas; specifically related to the volatility of financial markets and the link between asset markets and fluctuations in the real economy in terms of investment and unemployment. 

“In insurance markets, my work focuses on understanding the risks in the industry, which may help to guide future regulation of insurance and reinsurance companies."

The ERC is the first pan-European funding agency for investigator-driven frontier research. The mission of the ERC is to encourage the highest quality research in Europe through competitive funding and to support investigator-initiated frontier research.