This course is part of a project funded by the European Union on "Saving in Europe". Researchers at the University of Liechtenstein, in collaboration with the Free University of Bolzano and the Danish company Alguru, are developing two online courses aimed at bringing the subject of life-cycle financial planning closer to the people of Europe. Especially the first course is intended for the general public and does not require any basic knowledge. The topics of consumption and savings decisions, investment and financing are being successively developed here by simple means. The learning materials in this course consist of short videos, texts, small apps and a dashboard designed to help understand the implications of more complex topics such as interest rates, interest rate changes, inflation, optimal consumption, investments and more. In between, there are smaller comprehension questions that should help to document one's own learning progress. Each participant can personalize their learning progress and jump back (if necessary) at any time to work through crucial parts again.
This course does not require any previous knowledge.
Prof. Dr. Michael Hanke received his doctoral degree and habilitation from WU (Vienna), and is a Certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM). His research interests are in quantitative finance, stochastic optimization, scenario generation, and pension finance. Since 2014, he serves on the investment committee of a pension fund in Liechtenstein. His responsibilities and contributions to the project will be mainly in concept and content development.
Assistent Professor Dr. Sebastian Stöckl holds a PhD in Financial Economics and Master Degrees in Business Administration and technical Mathematics and is a Certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM). His research interests lie within the areas of forecasting, asset pricing, and risk management, where he has published in high ranking journals. He is relatively new to the world of pension finance, but will take an active role in the development and production of the online courses. He will also serve as project coordinator and manage all project related tasks.
Lukas Salcher recently joined the team of Prof. M. Hanke as a PhD student. He holds a Master Degree in Finance from the University of Liechtenstein. His research will be focused on applying machine learning techniques for portfolio optimization. As he is relatively new to the world of life-cycle financial planning he will provide support for the coordination and management of the project and related tasks.
Prof. Dr. Alex Weissensteiner will be the key person responsible for the tasks to be contributed by the UNIBZ. He has been active for around 13 years now in the areas of life-cycle financial planning, long-term asset allocation, stochastic optimization, and financial scenario generation. In these areas, he has published in top-rated journals in the areas of finance and economics. His background is in finance and quantitative methods, in particular, long-term asset allocation, financial optimization, and financial scenario generation, with applications to pension finance.
Aicha Kharazi, PhD is a Postdoctoral research fellow at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. Her main research interests are in macroeconomics, investigating credit market frictions in business cycles, the role of collateral and wealth inequality. Her current work is on the interaction between interest rates and saving on an aging population economy. Aicha received her PhD in economics and finance at University of Rome Tor Vergata.
Emil Ahlmann Østergaard who will be the main contributor from Alguru to this project has several years of experience building professional software in the industry. Emil has a bachelor and master’s degree from Technical University of Demark within Mathematical modelling and financial engineering and a Graduate Diploma in Business Administration/Finance from Copenhagen Business School.
No, all necessary documents are already part of the course and are freely available.
No, the development of this course has been funded by the European Union and is available free of charge to all interested parties.
In the last part of the course you will find relevant information. If you are very interested in the content, then we recommend our second online course, which is mainly aimed at students in the "Pension Finance" field.
All project details as well as information about involved persons, universities and companies can be found on our project homepage: www.savingineurope.eu.
Yes, a german version of this course can be found in the same portal.