Beatrice Weder di Mauro

Beatrice Weder di Mauro (born August 3, 1965) is a professor of economics at the University of Mainz, in Germany. 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 was 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 has advisory roles in several corporations, including UBS and Roche Holdings.

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, where she later settled with her family. Her father worked in a chemical company and the different standards of living of Switzerland and Guatemala sparked her interest in economics. In fact, she later enrolled at the University of Basel, where she studied economics and received a master's degree in 1989, a Doctorate in Economics in 1993, followed by a post-doctoral research fellowship from the University of Basel in 1994 and a research fellowship from the United Nations University in Tokyo from 1997 to 1998. In 1999, Weder di Mauro received the habilitation from the University of Basel.

Professional history

Weder di Mauro first joined the International Monetary Fund as an economist in 1994 and the World Bank in Washington DC for a year in 1996. From 1998 to 2001, Weder di Mauro was an associate professor of economics at the University of Basel, having first worked there as a scientific assistant for four years before joining the IMF. She then left the University of Basel in 2001 and became Professor of Economics, Economic Policy and International Macroeconomics at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, in 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. In 2003, Weder di Mauro was a research fellow at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) in London. In 2016 she participated in the Bilderberg conference in Dresden, Germany.

Corporate mandates and other interests

Previous mandates

From April 2005 to May 2010, Weder di Mauro served as a member of the Supervisory Board of Ergo Versicherungsgruppe AG. In 2006, di Mauro was a visiting scholar at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA. From 2007 to 2012, she served as a member of the Scientific Advisory Council at the Zentrum für Europäische Wirtschaftsforschung GmbH. In 2010, she started her 3-year mandate as a member of the Supervisory Board of ThyssenKrupp AG, which terminated in October 2013, and she was a resident scholar at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, D.C. She also served as a consultant for various international organizations, including the International Finance Corporation, the World Bank, the IMF, the United Nations University, the OECD Development Centre and the European Commission.

Current mandates

Since February 2006, Weder di Mauro is the director of Roche Holding AG. In 2010, she became a member of the European Advisory Group in the USA and chairman of the Global Agenda Council on Financial Crisis at the World Economic Forum. A year later, in 2011, she joined the Supervisory Board of the Deutsche Investitions- und Entwicklungsgesellschaft GmbH, and in May 2012, di Mauro was elected to the Board of Directors of UBS AG. After the restructuring in 2014, she became a member of the Board of Directors of UBS Group AG, and has been holding the position of member of the Audit and of the Risk Committees ever since. Since March 2013, she is also a member of the Supervisory Board of Robert Bosch GmbH. In addition, she currently is deputy chairman of the University Council of the University of Mainz, member of the Corporate Governance Commission of the German Government, member of the Senate of the Max Planck Society and member of the Global Agenda Council on Sovereign Debt of the World Economic Forum. She also serves as a member of the Economic Advisory Board at Fraport AG and as an advisory board member of Deloitte Germany. She is member of the Bellagio Group since 2014. She took part in an expert commission from 2006 to 2016 and belonged to the counsel of Manuel Barroso. She writes regular articles both in economic journals and in popular science journals. She writes columns in the Basler Zeitung on subjects such as the economic cycles, finance and development aid.

She is a member of Bombardier Inc. She participates as a member of the ETH Zurich Foundation Board of Trustees and of the Senate of the Max Planck Society.

Selected publications

• ———; Alesina, Alberto (2002), "Do Corrupt Governments Receive Less Foreign Aid?", American Economic Review, 92 (4): 1126–1137, doi:10.1257/00028280260344669 
• ———; Brunetti, Aymo (2003), "A free press is bad news for corruption", Journal of Public Economics, 87 (7–8): 1801–1824, doi:10.1016/S0047-2727(01)00186-4 
• ———; Van Rijckeghem, Caroline (2003), "Spillovers through banking centers: a panel data analysis of bank flows", Journal of International Money and Finance, 22 (4): 483–509, doi:10.1016/S0261-5606(03)00017-2 
• ———; Kugler, Peter (2004), "International Portfolio Holdings and Swiss Franc Asset Returns", Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, 140 (3): 301–325 
• ———; Liebig, Thilo; Porath, Daniel; Wedow, Michael (2007), "Basel II and bank lending to emerging markets: Evidence from the German banking sector", Journal of Banking & Finance, 31 (2): 401–418, doi:10.1016/j.jbankfin.2006.05.017 
• Five essays on economic causes of corruption. WWZ-Forum, Basel 2002.
• Institutional reform in transition economics. International Monetary Fund, Washington, DC, 2001.
• Model, myth or miracle. United Nations University Press, Tokio 1999, ISBN 92-808-1030-8.
• Wirtschaft zwischen Anarchie und Rechtsstaat. Rüegger, Chur 1993, ISBN 3-7253-0469-6.