Member Institutes

The House of Finance is home to three university departments, six research institutes, and three schools for graduate and executive education, including some two hundred researchers, more than forty of whom hold professorships. Interdisciplinary collaboration and close ties to researchers across Germany and abroad make the House of Finance a unique center of excellence in research and teaching as well as an important source of evidence-based insights for the public and private sectors.

University departments

The House of Finance contains two departments from Goethe University’s Faculty of Economics and Business – namely, Finance and Money and Macroeconomics. The twenty-four professors who make up these departments study a wide range of topics, including the function of financial markets, the specific characteristics of financial instruments, household finance, and monetary economics. The House of Finance is also home to six professorships from the Faculty of Law, who are dedicated, respectively, to stock market and capital market law, the legal foundations of the monetary system, commercial law, insurance law, legal aspects of financial market regulation, and the economic analysis of law. The teaching activities of these departments are supported by numerous honorary professors, who often contribute valuable real-world experience.

Research institutes

The research institutes located within the House of Finance address the entire spectrum of financial and monetary topics.

The Institute for Monetary and Financial Stability (IMFS) conducts interdisciplinary economic and legal research in the field of central banking. The professors at the IMFS advise government institutions and the general public on the basis of their research findings or are available as experts. Teaching at the IMFS is an important component and focuses on graduate education. In particular, it takes the form of structured doctoral training and the introduction of selected students to scientific work. At its events such as Working Lunches, Policy and Distinguished Lectures and the conference “The ECB and Its Watchers”, the IMFS welcomes more than 1,000 participants every year.

The International Center for Insurance Regulation (ICIR) focuses on high-quality research in insurance, insurance regulation and supervision. It addresses issues related to solvency regulation, insurers’ risk management, market conduct, and the economic impact of regulatory policies. The ICIR promotes an interdisciplinary approach by involving members from economics, finance and law. It provides various platforms, such as blogs, expert discussions and conferences, to discuss current issues in insurance regulation. Through cooperation with international bodies such as EIOPA or the World Bank, the ICIR fosters the exchange of ideas between insurance regulation and supervision, the insurance industry and academia.

The Center for Advanced Studies on the Foundations of Law and Finance (LawFin) is Germany’s first interdisciplinary research group in economics and law, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It explores how institutional and regulatory parameters influence financial market decisions and outcomes. LawFin examines the connections between legislation, economics, and politics to measure and evaluate the impact of law as a dynamic and evolutionary system on the financial sector and the economy, informing researchers how theoretical and empirical scholarship should optimally reflect these insights. The Center focuses on green finance and regulation. Believing interdisciplinary work enhances understanding of the interdependence of law and finance, LawFin seeks to integrate the comparative strengths of involved disciplines and provides a forum for global scholars from various disciplines to collaborate.

The Center for Financial Studies conducts independent and internationally oriented research on important topics in finance. It serves as a forum for dialogue between academia, policy makers and the financial industry. It also provides a platform for high-level basic as well as applied research of relevance to the European financial sector.

The Data Science Institute is a cooperation between Goethe University Frankfurt and TU Darmstadt Universities and a network of industry partners. Its mission is to contribute to the evolution of traditional industries towards digitized and high-performance industries by solving practical and theoretical problems with the tools of data science and methodology of scientific research. The institute is committed to conducting high-quality research at the cutting-edge of novel technologies and their accompanying phenomena. Research focuses on recent developments from the area of digital markets, applied artificial intelligence, the business value of IT, data-driven marketing, the adoption of new technologies and the impact of data science on various industries. The efl - the Data Science Institute also offers introductory courses in Data Science and the programming language Python.

The Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE (Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe) is dedicated to interdisciplinary research on financial markets and their participants in Europe as well as to independent policy advice. The Institute cooperates with researchers from the fields of economics, law, and political science and applies various scientific methods. Based on its research findings, the Institute maintains an ongoing dialogue with decision-makers in governments, parliaments, and supervisory and regulatory authorities on current financial market issues.

Schools for graduate and executive education

The House of Finance is home to various graduate degree programs and certification courses, thus furthering Goethe University’s mission to educate the next generation of academics and professionals.

The Graduate School of Economics, Finance, and Management (GSEFM) constitutes an alliance between Goethe University Frankfurt, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, and Technische Universität Darmstadt. GSEFM aims to establish a premier European center for quantitative and research-oriented graduate-level education in accounting, economics, finance, and marketing. Key mission of GSEFM is to train top-notch economists who are thoroughly prepared for a career in academia or can bring their research-based insights to bear at other institutions in the public or private sector.

The Institute for Law and Finance (ILF) is a center of academic teaching and research established in 2002 by Goethe University Frankfurt with the support of many prominent institutions. It offers two specialized Master of Laws (LL.M.) programs that provide interdisciplinary training to lawyers, senior management and executives and which attract many international students annually. It also plays an important role as a policy center in the legislative process by offering forums for continuous discussions and deep exchanges between academia and practitioners on current topics involving law, finance, economics, regulations and technology.

Goethe Business School (GBS) is the exclusive educational platform for business executives and professionals at Goethe University. Since its foundation in 2004, GBS has been located on one of the most modern campuses in Germany, in the heart of the European financial center of Frankfurt am Main. GBS offers a range of innovative part-time Master programs, including a Master in Finance (MA) with specialization options in Financial Technology Management and Risk Management & Regulation. In addition, GBS provides dynamic open certificate programs for individuals seeking professional development and custom programs tailored for organizations.