The LOEWE Center SAFE ("Sustainable Architecture for Finance in Europe") in the House of Finance at Goethe University Frankfurt will become a member of the Leibniz Association as of 1 January 2020. The General Assembly of the Leibniz Association passed an unanimous resolution this Thursday. SAFE will thus become a Leibniz Institute funded by the German federal and state governments as of 2020. The name of the institute will be "Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE".
SAFE is dedicated to interdisciplinary research of the financial markets and their players in Europe as well as to science-based, independent policy advice. The Institute focuses on the cooperation of researchers from the fields of economics and law, as well as political science and sociology.
"We are pleased about the decision of the General Assembly and the associated official admission of SAFE to the Leibniz Association. As a Leibniz Institute, we can continue to develop SAFE as a strong research community," says Jan Pieter Krahnen, Director of SAFE and Professor of Banking and Finance at Goethe University in Frankfurt. The Institute will continue its close cooperation with the University - as a basis for academic excellence in a socially highly relevant area.
SAFE was founded in 2013 as a cooperation between Goethe University Frankfurt and the Center for Financial Studies (CFS). In September 2017, the State of Hessen applied for SAFE's membership in the Leibniz Association.
The Leibniz Association brings together 95 independent institutes from a wide variety of disciplines that employ a total of around 20,000 people, including 10,000 scientists. In the field of economics, the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW Berlin), the Leibniz Center for European Economic Research (ZEW), the Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich (ifo Institute), the Institute for the World Economy (IfW), the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH) and the RWI - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research belong to the association.
Comments on SAFE's admission to the Leibniz Association
Angela Dorn, Hessian Minister for Higher Education, Research and the Arts
"SAFE has proven itself as an interdisciplinary research center of the highest academic excellence. The goal of researching a sustainable architecture for the financial markets and their players benefits enormously from this collaboration of disciplines. I am very proud that the state of Hessen, with its LOEWE funding, has made a significant contribution to the fact that it has now been included as an independent institute in the joint research funding of the federal and state governments and in the Leibniz Association. With funding of 33 million euros through the LOEWE program, we have created optimal framework conditions for SAFE's research and, as we are now seeing, have invested sensibly and sustainably in Hessen as a science location. I am sure that SAFE will also provide important national and international impulses for politics, business and society in the Leibniz Association on the way to a less crisis-prone and future-proof organization of the financial markets. For this reason, I was pleased to assume the chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of the new Leibniz Institute."
Peter Altmaier, Federal Minister of Economic Affairs and Energy
"The admission of SAFE to the Leibniz Association is a very important step for German and European financial market research and I am delighted about the many important impulses that the new Leibniz Institute will provide nationally and internationally.”
Dr. Thomas Schäfer, Hessian Minister of Finance
"SAFE is now a member of the Leibniz Association - a big compliment for the excellent academic work of the Financial Research Center! Frankfurt as a financial location benefits from the local economic institutions and therefore the acceptance of SAFE means a further upgrading for it as well. The support provided by our state program LOEWE, the state offensive for the development of scientific and economic excellence, has therefore been fully worthwhile. My best congratulations to the entire team!
Prof. Dr. Birgitta Wolff, President of the Goethe-University Frankfurt
"SAFE is the result of the Goethe University's outstanding, internationally visible financial market research over the past 10 to 15 years. It is good to see that the competence of our researchers around Jan Pieter Krahnen and his colleagues is now gaining even more development opportunities with their admission to the Leibniz Institute. The closest cooperation possible on the campus of Goethe University with law and economics, but also with other social sciences and the humanities, will provide further groundbreaking impulses for research, teaching and political consulting. At the same time, we – the University and SAFE – will continue to work intensively to ensure that more and more people understand how the interrelationships and regulatory logics surrounding money and finance function and can be shaped.”
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Matthias Kleiner, President of the Leibniz Association
"We are delighted that SAFE, the future Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE has been accepted into the Leibniz Association because its interdisciplinary research on financial markets addresses a socially highly relevant topic. SAFE further strengthens and enriches our focus on economic research. Thanks to the already existing cooperation with various Leibniz institutes in the field of economics, SAFE is already well integrated in our community, and further points of contact are obvious, for example, in the areas of "sustainable economic growth, functioning markets and institutions" or "social participation, poverty risks as well as educational and labor market opportunities". With its special focus on policy consulting, SAFE fulfills the transfer concept of the Leibniz Association of using its findings to benefit society - true to the motto `theoria cum praxi´ of its future patron Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.”
