Close-ups

Let’s talk about you: what is your background, what do you teach, and what are your research interests?
My name is Stefano Colonnello. I've been a researcher in Economic Politics at Ca’ Foscari since 2019. My areas of teaching are Economics of Markets and Financial Investments, Financial Economics, and Macroeconomics for postgraduate and doctorate programmes. My research revolves around the financial economy (on an empirical level) and its main aspects, such as corporate governance, financial brokering and the evaluation of financial activities.

Tell us about your academic path.
I graduated  in Finance at Bocconi University of Milan, and then I obtained a doctorate in finance at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Switzerland. During my PhD I focused on some of the traditional aspects of corporate finance, such as the conflict of interest between shareholders and creditors of a company, in particular regarding managerial remuneration. After earning my Phd in 2015, I moved to Germany and started working as Junior Professor at Otto-von-Guericke-Universität in Magdeburg and at Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung in Halle (Saale). During my experience in Germany I became more interested in researching asset pricing and financial brokering, with a particular attention to bank governance.

What are you most passionate about in your field of research?
I am particularly interested in the consequences that management incentivising (and, more generally, governance systems) within big companies can have on our economy. I think there's a long way ahead of us before we can fully understand those consequences, especially because microeconomic data in this field is becoming more available.