Stefanie Kleimeier

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Welcome to my homepage. Here you can learn about my research and teaching, find links to my latest working papers, research projects, conferences and much more. I am currently Associate Professor of Finance at the Maastricht University in the Netherlands as well as Professor Extraordinary at the University of Stellenbosch Business School in South Africa and Visiting International Professor at the Universität Münster in Germany. From 2015 to 2025, I held the position of Professor of Entrepreneurial Finance and Banking at the Open Universiteit in the Netherlands. I earned my doctorate at the University of Georgia in the USA in 1993.

My research focusses on retail banking, syndicated loans, project finance, banking market integration and - most recently - sustainable finance. My work has been published in academic journals including the Journal of Financial Intermediation, Economic Policy, World Development, Journal of Financial Stability, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of International Money and Finance and Financial Management.

I received grants from the German Academic Exchange Service, the Dutch Science Foundation, the Academic Consortium for the 21st Century and the European Credit Research Institute, consulted with the EU and the Center for European Policy Studies and taught graduate courses in 11 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and North America.

New Publication

Since 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused havoc around the world, disrupting financial markets and inflicting economic damage due to health restrictions. The pandemic's origin as a health shock makes it fundamentally different from previous crises, in particular for households.

In our paper "Determinants of Individuals' Objective and Subjective Financial Fragility during the COVID-19 Pandemic" in the Journal of Banking and Finance, Arvid Hoffmann (University of Adelaide), Marie-Hélène Broihanne, Daria Plotkia (both University of Strasbourg), Anja Göritz (University of Augsburg) and I examine determinants of the objective and subjective financial fragility of 2,100 individuals across Australia, France, Germany, and South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objective financial fragility reflects individuals' (in)ability to deal with unexpected expnses, while subjective financial fragility reflects their emotional response to financial demands.

Controlling for an extensive set of socio-demographics, we find that negative personal experiences during the pandemic (i.e., reduced or lost employment; COVID-19 infection) are associated with higher objective and subjective financial fragility. However, individuals’ cognitive (i.e., financial literacy) as well as non-cognitive abilities (i.e., internal locus of control; psychological resilience) help to counteract this higher financial fragility. Finally, we examine the role of government financial support (i.e., income support; debt relief) and find that it is negatively related to financial fragility only for the economically weakest. Our results have implications for public policymakers, giving them levers for reducing individuals’ objective and subjective financial fragility.

Link to Paper (Open Access)

New Publication

Despite awareness of the detrimental impact of CO2 pollution on the world climate, countries vary widely in how they design and enforce environmental laws.

In our paper "Exporting Pollution: Where Do Multinational Firms Emit CO2?" in Economic Policy, Itzhak Ben-David (Ohio State University & NBER), Yeejin Jang (University of New South Wales), Michael Viehs (Federated Hermes International) and I explore how firms respond to environmental regulation.

Using novel microdata about multinational firms' CO2 emissions across countries, we document that firms headquartered in countries with strict environmental policies perform their polluting activities abroad in countries with relatively weaker policies. These effects are largely driven by tightened environmental policies in home countries that incentivize firms to pollute abroad rather than lenient foreign policies that attract those firms. Although firms headquartered in countries with strict domestic environmental policies are more likely to export pollution to foreign countries, they nevertheless emit somewhat less overall CO2 globally.

Vox interview with Itzhak Ben-David

Link to Paper

New Publication

COVID-19 has a substantial and unexpected impact on individuals’ daily life around the world. Unprecedented public health restrictions such as lockdowns have the potential to affect multiple dimensions of individuals’ well-being, while the severity of such restrictions varies across countries. However, a holistic perspective comparing differences in and drivers of the different dimensions of well-being across countries differentially affected by COVID-19 is missing to date.

In our paper "Differences in and Drivers of Mental, Social, Functional, and Financial Well-Being During COVID-19" in PLoS-ONE, Arvid Hoffmann (University of Adelaide), Daria Plotkina (University of Strasbourg), Marie-Hélène Broihanne (University of Strasbourg), Anja Göritz (University of Freiburg) and I address this gap in the literature. We examine the mental, social, functional, and financial well-being of 2,100 individuals across Australia, France, Germany, and South Africa by means of a survey administered during May of 2021.

Supporting our holistic approach, we find that the different dimensions of well-being are correlated, with survey respondents from France reporting the lowest and those from Australia reporting the highest overall level of well-being. Respondents’ subjective and objective evaluations of their living conditions during lockdowns as well as positive health and financial behaviors are positively associated with their well-being during the pandemic.

Link to Paper (Open Access)