Beatrice Weder di Mauro


Beatrice Weder di Mauro is a Swiss academic and businesswoman who is currently professor of economics at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Distinguished Fellow-in-residence at the Emerging Markets Institute of INSEAD Singapore, and a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation. Since 2018, she also serves as President of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.
From June 2004 to 2012, she was a member of the German Council of Economic Experts. She was the first woman and the first non-German in the council whose responsibility is to advise the German government on economic issues. She has advised both the former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and the current Chancellor Angela Merkel. She also serves on the board of several major corporations, including UBS, Bombardier Inc. and Robert Bosch GmbH. Her research interests are in international macroeconomics, in particular financial crisis, global capital flows, financial regulation, sovereign debt, development and growth. She has published widely in leading academic journals and writes regular op-eds and contributions to the public policy debate.

Life and Education

Weder di Mauro spent her childhood with her family in Guatemala before returning to Switzerland at the age of sixteen. From 1971 to 1980, she studied in a German school in Guatemala and in 1984 she obtained the high school diploma in Basel. The different standards of living of Switzerland and Guatemala sparked her interest in economics. She later enrolled at the University of Basel, where she studied economics and received a Doctorate in Economics in 1993 and Habilitation in economics in 1999.

Professional history

Weder di Mauro joined the International Monetary Fund as an economist in 1994 and the World Bank in Washington DC to work on the team of the World Development Report in 1996. From 1997 to 1998 she was Research Fellow-in-residence at United Nations University in Tokyo and from 1998 to 2001 associate professor of economics at the University of Basel. In 2001 she became Professor of Economics, Economic Policy and International Macroeconomics at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany.
From 2002 to 2004, she was a member of the Swiss Federal Commission on Economy in Bern, and from August 2004 to 2012, she served on Germany's Council of Economic Experts. Weder di Mauro has been a fellow at the Centre for Economic Policy Research since 2003 and a senior fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research in Singapore since 2016.
Weder di Mauro served as consultant for various international organizations, including the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations University, the European Central Bank the OECD Development Centre and the European Commission. In 2016 she participated in the Bilderberg conference in Dresden, Germany.

Mandates and affiliations

Previous mandates

Weder di Mauro served on the supervisory boards of Ergo Versicherungsgruppe AG, Roche Holding AG. ThyssenKrupp AG, and Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft GmbH,. She was a member of the Advisory Group at Fraport AG and as Advisory Group of Deloitte Germany. She was a resident scholar and a member of the European Regional Advisory Group of the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. She chaired the Global Agenda Council on Sovereign Debt the World Economic Forum. and was a member if the Expert Group on Debt Redemption Fund and Eurobills of the European Commission from 2013 to 2014.

Current mandates

Weder di Mauro was elected to the Board of Directors of UBS AG. in 2012 and after the restructuring in 2014, she became a member of the Board of Directors of UBS Group AG. She has been member of the Audit Committee since 2012, a member of the Risk Committee from 2013 to 2017 and became a member of the Corporate Culture and Responsibility Committee in 2017. Since March 2013, she has been on the Supervisory Board of Robert Bosch GmbH. and since May 2016 on the supervisory board of Bombardier Inc.. She currently is Deputy Chairman of the University Council of the University of Mainz, a member of the ETH Zurich Foundation Board of Trustees and a member of the Bellagio Group since 2014.

Selected publications