Luisa Lambertini

Luisa Lambertini (born 1963 in Bologna, Italy) is an Italian economist specializing in monetary and fiscal policy. She holds the Chair of International Finance at the College of Management of Technology of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where she has been a professor since 2009.

She has been the current Rector of the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) between 1 July 2023, when she officially took office after being unanimously appointed by the University Council in October 2022 , and 31 December 2025 when she resigned.

Career Lambertini studied economics at University of Bologna and earned her Laurea cum laude in 1987. At the University of Warwick she further researched studies in economics and gained a master's degree in 1989 for a thesis on the supervision of Marcus Miller. She then joined University of California, Berkeley as a doctoral student of Maurice Moses Obstfeld and graduated in with a PhD in economics in 1995 with a thesis titled: Theory and Evidence on the Accumulation of Large Public Debts.

In 1995, she joined the Department of Economics at University of California, Los Angeles as an assistant professor before going to work as an associate professor at Boston College's Department of Economics in 2003. In 2005, she moved to the Department of Economics at Claremont McKenna College as an associate professor.

Lambertini joined EPFL's College of Management of Technology first as an associate professor before being promoted as full professor in 2009. Since 2007, she has held the Chair of International Finance at the EPFL's College of Management of Technology.

Since July 1, 2023, she has been the new Rector of USI, Università della Svizzera italiana.

Research Lambertini's research concerns the interplay of monetary and fiscal policies, in the inclusion of housing and mortgage default into macro-economic models, and in the analysis of regulation and macro-prudential policies in models with financial institutions.

Lambertini develops models of general equilibrium macroeconomic for the investigation of economic policies that alleviate the impact of economic crises. Her research has influenced the design of monetary and fiscal institutions as it has elucidated which interactions of monetary and fiscal policy may lead to sub-optimal equilibria. Her research illuminates the impact of austerity on competitiveness and growth. She also contributed to the development of macro-prudential regulation for banks and its effect on financial stability and lending. Lambertini is an executive committee member and former president of the International Banking, Economics and Finance Association (IBEFA). She was an advisory council at the Society for Computational Economics (2016–2020), an editor of The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics (2012-2019), and a member of the Committee for Funding Italian Research Project (PRIN) (2011). the John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellowship (1994), the Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship (1993), the University of California, Berkeley Fellowship (1992), the Luciano Jona Fellowship (1990), and the Credito Italiano Award (1988).

From 1977 to 1987 she was a member of the Italian National Handball Team.

Selected works