Members of the Department for Finance and Insurance

Prof. Dr. Peter Limbach

Professor of Finance and Corporate Governance at Bielefeld University

Email: peter.limbach[at]uni-bielefeld.de

Short Curriculum Vitae

Before joining the University of Bielefeld in May 2021, Peter Limbach was the CFR Junior-Professor of Investments at the University of Cologne. He holds a German Diploma (equivalent to MSc) in economics from the University of Bonn and a PhD in finance from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. Peter is a research fellow of the Centre for Financial Research (CFR), Cologne, as well as a member of the Hamburg Financial Research Center (HFRC). His research papers have been published in leading scientific journals in accounting and finance and have repeatedly been accepted for presentation at top academic conferences, such as the Western Finance Association annual meetings and the AAA FARS Mid-Year meetings. Peter organizes one of Europe’s leading virtual research seminars in accounting and finance. Also, since 2021, Peter has held the position of vice chairman of the scientific commission Banking and Finance of the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB), and since 2022, he has served as co-editor of Management Review Quarterly.

Research Interest

Prof. Peter Limbach is an expert on various topics in applied econometrics, corporate finance and governance as well as corporate sustainability. Via the German Academic Association for Business Research (VHB), he offers the course “Empirical Corporate Sustainability Research” for PhDs across the German-speaking countries. Peter is also very passionate about topics of business valuation.

Representative publications

• Sell-Side Analysts with Accounting Experience (Peter Limbach with Christian Andres, Francois Brochet, and Nicola Schumacher), Review of Accounting Studies, forthcoming.
• Does Speculative News Hurt Productivity? Evidence from Takeover Rumors (Peter Limbach with Christian Andres, Dimitry Bazhutov, Douglas Cumming, and Gerrit Köchling), Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 60, 2952-2996, 2025.
• The Supply and Effectiveness of Investor Relations in Insider- vs. Outsider-Oriented Markets (Peter Limbach with Dimitry Bazhutov, André Betzer, Francois Brochet, and Markus Doumet), Management Science 69, 660-683, 2023.
• CEO Tenure and Firm Value (Peter Limbach with Francois Brochet, Markus Schmid, and Meik Scholz-Daneshgari), The Accounting Review 96, 47-71, 2021.

Projects and third-party funding

Prof. Peter Limbach leads two large research projects, one on corporate capital allocation strategies and one on ESG reporting. His research has been partly funded by Stiftung Prof. Dr. oec. Westerfelhaus and by the strategy budget of the University of Bielefeld.

Prof. Dr.Frank Riedel

Professor for Mathematics and Economics at Bielefeld University

Email: frank.riedel[at]uni-bielefeld.de

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Short Curriculum Vitae

Prof. Dr. Frank Riedel is a Full Professor of Mathematics and Economics at Bielefeld University and Director of the Center for Mathematical Economics (IMW). His research focuses on mathematical finance, decision-making under uncertainty, game theory, and general equilibrium theory. He studied mathematics and philosophy in Freiburg and Berlin, received his Ph.D. and Habilitation from Humboldt University Berlin, and has held academic positions at Humboldt University, the University of Bonn, and visiting appointments at institutions including Stanford University, UC Berkeley, and Princeton University. Since 2007, he has been a professor at Bielefeld University, where he plays a leading role in research on uncertainty, risk, and strategic interaction in economic systems.

Research Interest

Frank Riedel’s research expertise lies in the mathematical and theoretical foundations of economics, with a particular focus on decision-making under uncertainty, mathematical finance, and game theory. His work integrates tools from probability theory, stochastic analysis, and economic theory to study financial markets, risk measurement, general equilibrium under uncertainty, and strategic interaction among economic agents. He is especially known for contributions to dynamic risk measures, Knightian uncertainty, model ambiguity, and equilibrium analysis, bridging rigorous mathematical methods with core economic questions about uncertainty, incentives, and market behavior.
His research papers have been published in top journals in Economics (Econometrica, Review of Economic Studies), Finance (Finance and Stochastics, Mathematical Finance), and Applied Mathematics (Annals of Applied Probability, Stochastic Processes and their Applications).

Representative publications

• Burzoni, Matteo, Frank Riedel, and H. Mete Soner. "Viability and arbitrage under Knightian uncertainty." Econometrica 89.3 (2021): 1207-1234.
• Riedel, Frank. "Optimal stopping with multiple priors." Econometrica 77.3 (2009): 857-908.
• Riedel, Frank. "Dynamic coherent risk measures." Stochastic processes and their applications 112.2 (2004): 185-200.

Projects and third-party funding

Frank Riedel is speaker of the Research Training Group 2865 "Coping with Uncertainty in Dynamic Economie" and co-speaker of the Collaborative Research Center 1283 "Taming uncertainty and profiting from randomness and low regularity in analysis, stochastics and their applications". He has obtained numerous grants at the national and international level, leading to collaborations with top schools including the Paris School of Economics, Princeton University, and Kyoto University.

Prof. Dr. Maren Diane Schmeck

Professor of Actuarial Sciences at Bielefeld University

Email: maren.schmeck[at]uni-bielefeld.de

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Short Curriculum Vitae

Maren Diane Schmeck has been a Professor of Actuarial Sciences at the Center for Mathematical Economics (IMW), Bielefeld University, since 2023. Her research interests lie in the fields of Insurance Mathematics and Energy Finance. She earned her PhD from the University of Oslo, Norway, and has held academic positions at the University of Cologne, Bielefeld University, and LMU Munich. She is part of the advisory board of the DGVFM (German Society for Insurance and Financial Mathematics).

Research Interest

Professor Maren Diane Schmeck’s research expertise focuses on energy markets, where she examines the impact of factors such as wind and solar power on prices, and develops risk management strategies including the pricing of futures, options, and Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs). In the field of insurance mathematics, she specializes in modeling and managing systematic mortality risk. Additionally, she investigates the use of stochastic clocks in both insurance and finance to quantify catastrophic events and analyze the influence of market activity on prices.

Representative publications

• "Mortality Options: An Insurer’s Point of View" (2021), with H. Schmidli. Insurance: Mathematics and Economics (96), pp. 98-115.
• "On the seasonality in the implied volatility surface of energy options" (2019), with V. Fanelli. Quantitative Finance 19(8), pp. 1321-1337.
• "Electricity price modeling with stochastic time change" (2017), with S. Borovkova. Energy Economics 63, pp. 51-65

Projects and third-party funding

Maren Schmeck is PI in the Research Training Group 2865 “Coping with Uncertainty in Dynamic Economies” and board member of the German Society for Insurance and Financial Mathematics (DGVFM).

She has been awarded research grants supporting research stays at the University of Padua, as well as travel grants for participation in prominent international conferences in the fields of insurance and financial mathematics.