Collegium Helveticum
Switzerland
fellow
Jędrzej Białkowski
2025-2026
Home institution
University of Canterbury
Country of origin (home institution)
New Zealand
Discipline(s)
Economy and finance; Political Sciences
Theme(s)
Labor, Capital & Innovation; Public Policies
Fellowship dates
›
Biography
Jędrzej Białkowski is a professor of finance at the University of Canterbury (NZ). His research focuses on financial risk management, behavioural finance, and investments, including socially responsible investing. Since the early 2000s, he has especially been focusing on the relationship between politics and capital markets, which resulted in important contributions to the literature.
Jędrzej was a visiting scholar at McCombs School of Business, the University of Texas at Austin (US), and Saïd Business School, University of Oxford (UK). His international cooperation resulted in nearly forty publications in peer-reviewed journals. He has published in top-ranked journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of Banking and Finance as well as in top outlets in the area of derivatives, including the Journal of Derivatives and the Journal of Futures Markets. Jędrzej has received several prestigious awards, including the Boyle, Lally, and Rose Cup for best overall paper at the 2019, 2022 and 2025 New Zealand Finance Colloquium. Jędrzej’s research has been featured in the international press, among others in Les Echos (FR), Financial Times (DE), Reuters (DE), Economist (UK), The Huffington Post (US), Voice of America (US), and US Fed News (US).
Research Project
Understanding the Complex Relationship between National Politics and Behavioral Finance
In 2024, high-stakes elections took place in over fifty countries, testing even well-established democracies and emboldening leaders with authoritarian tendencies. These events highlight the growing importance of understanding how political developments influence other domains—particularly financial markets. As national politics and market behavior become increasingly intertwined, the relevance of behavioral finance in this context becomes ever more apparent.
Against this backdrop, Jędrzej Białkowski will explore during his fellowship how political developments shape behavioral patterns in financial markets. One promising line of inquiry involves assessing the quality of political signals—such as misinformation or fake news—and their potential role in driving behavioral anomalies in investor decision-making.
Although the topic is complex, Jędrzej, together with Associate Fellow Thorsten Hens, brings substantial expertise to the project. Thorsten has conducted behavioral finance research for nearly three decades, while Jędrzej has focused on the intersection of politics and finance since 2005. Their collaboration aims to generate insights that will contribute not only to finance and economics but also to political science and related disciplines.
Research Interests:
Finance and politics, policy making.