expanded their powers, communities have been left powerless in dealing with the consequences of technological change and globalisation. as a result, people turn towards populist politicians. their solutions, however, undermine the liberal market democratic system that has brought about prosperity. the appropriate solution to many of our problems consists of returning power from the state to the community. communities should be able to develop policies to address their own needs. this makes them less receptive to populist solutions. raghu ’ s view reminds me of the political system in switzerland. here, political decisions are taken at the lowest possible level of governance, closest to the people concerned. this decentralisation fosters citizens ’ engagement in their communities. today, raghu will speak about an issue that is more narrow in scope, but which is of great importance to central banks, not least to the swiss national bank. his speech is about the spillovers of monetary policy beyond a country ’ s border. this topic has attracted a lot of attention in the past few years following qe and other unconventional monetary policy measures adopted by central banks. who better to speak to us on this subject than raghu with his profound knowledge of capital markets and his experience as the central bank governor of a country highly exposed to monetary policy decisions taken elsewhere? ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming raghuram rajan with a big round of applause. page 4 / 4

speech embargo 19 september 2019, 5. 30 pm fourth karl brunner distinguished lecture introduction of raghuram rajan, eth zurich thomas j. jordan chairman of the governing board swiss national bank zurich, 19 september 2019 © swiss national bank, zurich, 2019 page 1 / 4 ladies and gentlemen i am very pleased to welcome you all to this year ’ s karl brunner distinguished lecture. this occasion marks the 30th anniversary of karl brunner ’ s death. in the karl brunner lecture series, the swiss national bank pays tribute to academics whose research is of particular relevance for central banking. today we are celebrating the outstanding contribution made by raghuram rajan, the katherine dusak miller distinguished service professor of finance at the booth school of business at the university of chicago. we are honoured that dr rajan has accepted our invitation to deliver this lecture. raghuram rajan was born on 3 february 1963 in bhopal, india. he started his career with a bachelor ’ s degree in electrical engineering from the indian institute of technology delhi. following the decision to leave the sphere of electromagnetic fields and waves in favour of the oscillations of the economy and financial markets, raghu joined the doctoral programme at the massachusetts institute of technology ( mit ), where he received a phd for his thesis ʻessays on banking ’. four years later, at the age of just 32, he became a full professor of finance at the university of chicago. exceptional academic raghu is an exceptional academic. he has done pioneering empirical and theoretical work across a remarkably broad field of topics. his main interests, however, lie in banking, corporate finance and economic development, and especially the role played by finance in economic development. in his paper entitled ʻfinancial dependence and growth ’, co - authored with luigi zingales, he found evidence of a positive causality between the level of development of a country ’ s financial sector and income growth. according to google scholar, this paper has been cited more than 9, 000 times. this is on a par with milton friedman ’ s influential 1967 presidential address to the american economic association on the concept of the natural rate of unemployment. raghu ’ s trademark is his willingness to challenge the accepted wisdom of the day. the bestknown example of this took place at the jackson hole symposium in 2005. there he warned of an upcoming meltdown in the global financial system, with substantial negative consequences for the real economy