Media Releases
Published Date: 18 December 2019

Eminent financial economist Amit Seru appointed MAS Term Professor at NUS

                

 

Singapore, 18 December 2019… The National University of Singapore (NUS) and the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) have jointly appointed Professor Amit Seru, an eminent financial economist, as the MAS Term Professor in Economics and Finance from 16 to 20 December 2019. Prof Seru will be hosted by the Department of Finance at the NUS Business School and the Economic Policy Group at the MAS during the term of the Professorship.

 

Prof Seru is the Steven and Roberta Denning Professor of Finance at Stanford University. His research has focused on financial intermediation and regulation, interaction of the internal organisation of firms with financing and investment, and incentive provision in firms. He is a Senior Fellow at both the Hoover Institution and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. Prior to his appointment at Stanford University, Prof Seru held faculty positions at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

 

Prof Seru was previously the 2018 Alexandre Lamfalussy Senior Research Fellow at the Bank for International Settlements, and served on the Working Group on Behavioural Economics and Corporate Finance hosted by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. He is a Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research.

 

Distinguished Professor Andrew Rose, Dean, NUS Business School, said, “Prof Amit Seru is an esteemed figure in corporate finance who has produced influential research in fields such as financial regulation and incentive provision in firms. I look forward to his visit, and believe our faculty and students will benefit from their interactions with him.”

 

Mr Edward Robinson, Deputy Managing Director (Economic Policy) and Chief Economist at MAS, said, “Prof Amit Seru’s wide-ranging research on banking regulations, firm behaviour and more recently, fintech and shadow banking, is most relevant to economic and financial policy work in Singapore. His papers on the US mortgage market have provided new insights on the differential impact of fixed versus adjustable contracts on household deleveraging in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis. Prof Seru’s research contributions have also shed new light on the role of financial frictions in affecting economic agents’ behaviour, with implications for macroeconomic outcomes. We are honoured to host him at MAS and look forward to a productive exchange of views with such an eminent scholar.”

 

At NUS, Prof Seru will deliver a public lecture and engage faculty members and PhD students on their research. He will also visit MAS, where he will conduct a seminar on the rise of fintech and shadow banks, and engage policymakers and economists on financial and macroprudential policy issues.

 

About the MAS Term Professorship in Economics and Finance

 

First established in 2009, the MAS Term Professorship in Economics and Finance is awarded to distinguished scholars, who are appointed as Visiting Professors at both the Department of Economics at the NUS Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and the NUS Business School. It aims to strengthen Singapore’s financial and economics research infrastructure and contribute to a vibrant research community and culture at local universities.

 

The MAS Term Professorship in Economics and Finance has been awarded to 20 distinguished scholars over the last 10 years.