Wagner Wolf

Wolf Wagner’s research focuses on systemic risk in the banking sector and on the consequences of the various new techniques for transferring credit risk for the financial system.

Since 2003 he has been working on credit risk transfer innovations, such as Collateralized Loan Obligations, which now play a major part in the crisis. He has published various papers on the incentive problems arising from such securitisations.  A main theme in this work is that credit risk transfer does not, as commonly believed before the crisis, lower the risk of banks by allowing them to shed more risks. Another theme in Wolf Wagner’s research is the need to base financial regulation on systemic considerations, rather than treating banks on a standalone basis. An outcome of this research is that banks should be regulated according to their contribution to systemic risk and not solely based on a bank’s individual level of risk.

Wolf Wagner is an associate professor at Tilburg University.  He received his PhD in 2002 and since then has stayed at the Stockholm School of Economics and at Cambridge University. Wolf Wagner gives frequent talks at central banks on systemic risk and financial innovations.