Dr. Heiko Hesse

Lecturer on "The Global Financial Crisis-Systemic Risk and Spillovers" on 11 May 2009


Dr. Heiko Hesse from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC talked on May 11, 2009 on "The Global Financial Crisis. Systemic Risk and Spillovers" and especially the extensive Q&A session after his hour long talk was greatly appreciated.

Dr. Heiko Hesse is an Economist in the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the IMF after having worked two years on the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report. Prior to that, he was an Economist at the World Bank from 2006-2007, working on the Commission on Growth and Development, which brings together twenty-one leading practitioners from government, business and the policymaking arenas and is chaired by Nobel Laureate Michael Spence. Before that in 2005-2006, he was a Visiting Scholar at Yale University and a consultant at the World Bank. He also worked at McKinsey, NERA Economic Consulting as well as PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Some of his current research involves systemic risk, sovereign wealth funds, Islamic finance as well as spillovers to Emerging Market countries, and he regularly contributes to the economics blogs VOX and RGE Monitor. For the past two years, he also has been involved in a Bundesbank research project on banking stability in Germany.

Dr.Hesse obtained his PhD in Economics from Nuffield College, University of Oxford and his BSc in Financial Economics from the University of Essex. A native of Germany and Thailand, he is a former professional football player for Borussia Dortmund as well as one of the main actors in the German movie documentary "Die Champions" (2003) and the sequel "HalbZeit" (public release in 2008) by Adolf-Grimme-Prize Winner Christoph Huebner. In Washington DC, he is engaged in transatlantic issues as the President of the Washington European Society, an incorporated non-profit.