Reint Gropp holds a PhD degree from the University Wisconsin-Madison. Before joining EBS he worked for the IMF and for the ECB, where he was Deputy Head of Financial Research. He has also been a Visiting Professor at University Frankfurt and is currently a Research Fellow of the CFS and a Research Associate with the ZEW. His work has inter alia been published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, the Journal of Banking and Finance and the Review of Finance. He is the winner of the 2007 Barclays Best Paper Award for the overall best paper presented at the European Finance Association.