On April 3, 2025, we hosted the fifth edition of the Tri-City Bridge Workshop on Empirical Research in Finance at the University of Zurich. I co-organized this year’s edition together with Jason Blunier, Olimpia Carradori, and Zhixi Wei (all UZH/SFI).
The Tri-City Bridge Workshop is a PhD-driven initiative that rotates across four partner institutions, the University of Zurich, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, Bayes Business School, and the Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE. Each edition brings together early-career researchers and senior scholars in a format built around mentorship: PhD students present their work, and established academics serve as discussants and mentors. Previous editions took place in Zurich (2021), Frankfurt (2022), London (2023), and Frankfurt again (2024).
This year’s mentors included Maria Loumioti (UT Dallas), Arna Olafsson (Copenhagen Business School), Thomas Maurer (University of Hong Kong), Martin Schmalz (Oxford), Michele Pelli (Central Bank of Ireland), Michael Weber (University of Chicago), and Steven Ongena (University of Zurich).
We were thrilled to have Itzhak Ben-David (Ohio State University and NBER) deliver the keynote, presenting “From Anecdotes to Insights: Streamlining the Research Idea Generation Process” on how to systematically turn observations into research questions, which felt especially fitting for an audience of PhD students working to sharpen their own ideas.
We also cooperated with the BIS-CEPR-Gerzensee-SFI Conference on Financial Intermediation and the SGF Conference, encouraging participants and visitors to make the most out of their week in Switzerland and Zurich.
Find the full program here: https://sites.google.com/view/tri-city-bridge-workshop2025/home
The next edition will be hosted at Frankfurt School of Finance & Management.