Franziska Bender
I am an economist at the Swiss Institute for International Economics and Applied Economic Research (SIAW) at the University of St.Gallen. My research is on how households and firms form beliefs under uncertainty, and how these beliefs shape their decisions and, ultimately, macroeconomic outcomes — with a particular interest in innovation and long-run growth.
My work combines micro data, natural-language processing of news and corporate filings, and macroeconomic theory. Recent and ongoing projects examine how households use news media to forecast their own incomes; how uncertainty about R&D returns can lock economies into persistent low-growth episodes; and how the effect of uncertainty on firms' R&D depends on the type of risk they face.
Building on this line of work, I am currently associated with the SNSF Starting Grant project Debt, Growth, and the Macroeconomy: A Unified Perspective (PI: Prof. Martin Wolf), where we study the two-way interaction between growth and household, corporate, and sovereign debt.
You can find more on my research page, or get in touch via CV & contact.