Call for Projects
Lamfalussy Research Fellowship

The European Central Bank (ECB) is seeking applications from promising young researchers for five Lamfalussy Fellowships in 2013. The Lamfalussy Fellows programme was launched in 2003 in the context of the ECB-CFS Research Network on "Capital Markets and Financial Integration in Europe". It aims to promote high-quality research on the structure, integration and performance of the European financial system. The programme is named after Baron Alexandre Lamfalussy, the first President of the European Monetary Institute. Each fellowship is endowed with an honorarium of Euro 10,000. The selection committee will include leading academic scholars such as Professor Geert Bekaert (Columbia Business School) and Professor Xavier Freixas (Universitat Pompeu Fabra), as well as senior central bank researchers.

RESEARCH PROJECTS: The successful candidates will be required to write a research paper during 2013 in one of the following research areas:
1) Design, financial market interactions (e.g. relating to fragmentation, asset valuations or market sentiment), macroeconomic impact (e.g. on growth and inflation) and trade-offs of non-standard central bank interventions in financial markets;
2) Incorporating financial instability (defaults of financial intermediaries, breakdowns of financial markets, widespread illiquidity, nonlinearities etc.) in models of the aggregate economy (projects using non-standard approaches, such as agent-based modelling or methodologies from the natural or other sciences, are also welcome);
3) New approaches to micro and macro-prudential supervision and regulation, i.e. assessing the effectiveness of prudential policies as well as their interaction with other public policies (e.g. monetary, fiscal, social), including aspects of the planned European banking union;
4) The role of fiscal rules and fiscal governance for financial market confidence, stability and efficiency, in particular in a monetary union, and the phenomenon of sovereign contagion and adequate policy responses.

Proposals on other important issues on the structure, integration and performance of the European financial system will also be considered. Lamfalussy Fellows are expected to present their papers at relevant ECB workshops and conferences and ultimately to publish them in leading refereed journals. Information about previous and current Fellows can be obtained from the following website: http://www.eu-financial-system.org/index.php?id=12

QUALIFICATIONS: Applicants should be no more than 36 years old by the deadline for submission. Researchers at assistant professor level and very advanced PhD students are particularly encouraged to apply. None of the authors involved in the paper can be in an employment relationship with the European Central Bank.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE: Applications should be submitted in English and include a cover letter, curriculum vitae, two letters of recommendation and a two-page research proposal falling under one of the topics mentioned above. They should also contain a statement concerning the candidate's current sources of funding. Applications should be sent by e-mail to: lamfalussy.fellowships.2013@ecb.europa.eu no later than 31 January 2013. The Selection Committee aims to award the five fellowships by April 2013.

ABOUT BARON LAMFALUSSY: Alexandre Lamfalussy is one of the leading central bankers of his time and is one of the main supporters of a single capital market within the European Union. He was a member of the Delors Committee for the Study of European Economic and Monetary Union, the General Manager of the Bank for International Settlements and the first President of the European Monetary Institute (in charge of preparing the third stage of EMU). He was also an Executive Director of Banque Bruxelles Lambert, Chairman of EuroMTS, and he chaired the "Committee of Wise Men on the Regulation of European Securities Markets", whose reform proposals were adopted by the EU Council in Stockholm in March 2001.

Baron Lamfalussy was born in Hungary in 1929 and studied at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium. He obtained a doctorate (D.Phil.) in economics from Oxford University (Nuffield College) and taught at the University of Louvain and Yale University. He is the author of numerous research articles and books on economic policy.