Job Market Candidates 2025/26
We are proud to present our current candidates on the job market and introduce the next generation of talent who are ready to make a difference.
- Academic Placement Director: Prof. Felix Kübler
- Discover successful placements of graduates from our department:Graduates page
Table of contents
Mohamed Hamoud
Research Interest: Asset Pricing, Macro-finance, Monetary Policy
Contact:
mohamed.hamoud@df.uzh.ch
Personal Website
Main Advisor: Felix Kübler
Job market paper: Monetary Policy Surprises and the Term Structure of Equity
This paper analyzes the impact of monetary policy surprises on the term structure of equity premia in order to better understand equity market reactions to these surprises. To that end, the paper uses data from dividend futures markets to directly estimate maturity-specific equity premia. I find that monetary policy surprises have a significant impact on the term structure of equity premia; the effect on the short end is approximately twice as large as that on the long end. Specifically, I find that a surprise rate cut that lowers the 1-year yield by 1 basis point results in a 4- to 6-basis-point decrease in short-term equity premia and a 2- to 3-basis-point decrease in long-term equity premia. I further provide evidence that this response pattern is primarily attributable to the impact of monetary policy surprises on short-term interest rates, rather than to their impact on long-term interest rates or risk sentiment and is predominantly driven by yield-seeking behavior rather than a change in risk aversion.
Mojtaba Hayati
Research Interest: Macro-finance, Household Finance, Asset Pricing
Contact:
mojtaba.hayati@df.uzh.ch
Personal Website
Main Advisor: Felix Kübler
Job market paper: Scale-dependent Returns and Dynamics of the Interest Rate
Using historical U.S. data, I revisit the empirical evidence for the scale-dependency of returns over a span of 70 years. Contrary to recent findings that suggest returns on wealth increase with wealth and the richest people are the people with the highest returns, I find that this has not always been the case. Specifically, prior to 1980, I document that returns start to decline at the top levels, and the richest people do not have the highest returns. I propose an explanation for this phenomenon: the observed scale-dependent returns result from different revaluations of households’ wealth due to varying exposures to interest rate risk. Changes in interest rates affect the returns of different households differently based on the duration of their assets. Since wealthier people tend to hold assets with a longer duration, an increase in the real interest rate (as it was before 1980) resulted in lower returns for them. Conversely, a decrease in the risk-free interest rate (as seen after 1980) led to higher returns for the wealthy. Ultimately, I developed a model to explain why richer households tend to have assets with longer durations. I show that as their income is more correlated with the short-term interest rate (which is highly cyclical), they choose a higher duration (which is countercyclical) to hedge against that risk.
Alex Osberghaus
Research Interest: Financial Intermediation, Corporate Finance, NBFIs
Contact:
alex.osberghaus@df.uzh.ch
Personal Website
Advisors: Steven Ongena and Andreas Fuster
Synthetic, but How Much Risk Transfer?
Banks use synthetic risk transfers (SRTs) to sell potential losses in their loan portfolios to non-bank investors while retaining the loans on their balance sheets. We investigate this trillion-euro market using transaction-level data from the euro area, the largest SRT market, and highlight three channels of potential risks to financial stability. First, we causally show that banks synthetically transfer loans that are capital-expensive relative to their riskiness. As banks redeploy the freed capital, they become effectively less capitalized. Second, after the SRT, banks reduce their monitoring efforts compared to other banks’ lending to the same firm. Third, SRT investors are interconnected with the banking sector. Banks are more likely to sell SRTs to investors to which they also lend credit, and total bank credit to these investors increases before the SRT investment, implying that SRTs are partially debt-financed. US SRTs may be riskier and investors more leveraged.
