Pascal Kieren appointed Professor of Business Administration with a focus on financial services

The following text has been machine translated from the German with no human editing.

A particular focus of his work is on how people process information and use it to make financial decisions. This topic is becoming increasingly important, as information is now available in ever-greater volumes and at ever-faster speeds, whilst financial products are simultaneously becoming more complex. This plays an important role, for example, in investment decisions, wealth accumulation and retirement planning: people must constantly assess, on the basis of a vast amount of information, how markets, prices, risks or their own financial situation might develop in the future. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the fundamental mechanisms underlying financial decisions, in order to derive insights for consumer protection and the further development of financial market regulation.

Pascal Kieren's research has received several awards, including the Hogarth-Einhorn New Investigator Award from the Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and the German Research Foundation (DFG) funds it.

At Saarland University, Pascal Kieren aims to further develop his research into individual financial behaviour and to investigate more closely the consequences that the decisions of many market participants have for financial markets and macroeconomic development. In doing so, the financial economist also addresses topics relevant to economic policy, such as inflation, and collaborates with international financial institutions. In this way, he aims to establish a research focus in the field of finance that is methodologically diverse and empirically oriented. In his teaching, too, Pascal Kieren intends to bring together behavioural, financial institutional and macro-financial perspectives, thereby further strengthening the university's profile in finance.

The Faculty of Empirical Human Sciences and Economics offers a particularly suitable environment for this, as there are numerous points of connection both within business administration and with psychology. Pascal Kieren intends to capitalize on these conditions to initiate interdisciplinary research projects, bring his international research network to Saarbrücken and further expand collaboration with financial institutions. In doing so, he also aims to strengthen the link between financial research and practice.

Short biography

Pascal Kieren first completed a B.A. in Business Administration at Saarland University, followed by an M.A. specialising in Finance at the University of Mannheim. There, he obtained his Ph.D. in 2020 in the field of behavioural financial market research. He then undertook postdoctoral research at the Alfred Weber Institute at the University of Heidelberg. During this time, he undertook research visits to renowned international institutions such as the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Indiana University in the USA. Most recently, he worked as a junior lecturer in finance at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management.