LORENZ KUENG

Prof. Küng joined the economics department of USI in 2019. He earned a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2012, both Bachelor and Masters degrees in economics and mathematics from the University of Fribourg in 2005, and a diploma in economics from the Swiss National Bank’s Study Center Gerzensee in 2006.

Before joining USI, he was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago, a Faculty Research Fellow of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Boston, and served as a Research Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. He is a Research Affiliate of the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London and a Faculty Member of the Swiss Finance Institute (SFI).

His research focuses on household economics and finance, public finance, and applied macroeconomics. His latest research investigates the risk of owning versus renting housing, the consumption response of households to unconditional cash transfers, and how borrowing constraints affected the effectiveness of fiscal policies in stimulating the economy during the financial crisis. His research has been published in leading economics, finance, and management journals, such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics, Management Science, the Journal of Monetary Economics, or the Journal of Public Economics.

His work has also been cited and discussed in various media outlets such as The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, Bloomberg, CBS News, Slate.com, CentralBanking.com, Vox, Die Neue Zürcher Zeitung, or Das Handelsblatt.

He teaches Household Economics and Finance at the bachelor’s as well as at the PhD level (jointly listed with the SFI) and Corporate Finance at the master’s level.