Christian Diem

Biography

Christian Diem is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the KOF Swiss Economic Institute at ETH Zurich, Associate Fellow at INET Oxford, and Associate Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub, Vienna. He focuses on firm-level production networks, systemic risk, and supply chain resilience.

His research aims to better understand economic and financial systems using tools from economics, network science, generative AI, natural language processing (NLP), machine learning, and computer simulations. A central focus of his work is the modelling and reconstruction of large-scale firm-level production networks to quantify systemic risk, understand how economic shocks propagate, and assess economic resilience. He combines empirical analysis with these computational methods to improve the reconstruction of supply chain networks and the empirical foundations of economic simulation models.

His current research focuses on identifying vulnerabilities in production networks and quantifying supply chain resilience, with a particular emphasis on the Swiss economy. His work also encompasses systemic risks in food supply chains and the propagation of supply chain shocks to the financial system, including the development of integrated economic and financial stress-testing models.

Christian holds a master's degree in Quantitative Finance and a PhD in Economics and Social Sciences, both from the Vienna University of Economics and Business. Previously, he was a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School (INET Oxford) and the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment at the University of Oxford, and a Senior Scientist at the Complexity Science Hub Vienna, where he remains affiliated as Associate Faculty in Supply Chain Science.

Christian's research has been featured on national television, radio, and in major newspapers in Austria. He is one of the lead organisers of the firmnets interdisciplinary workshop series on firm-level supply networks. He has acquired and contributed to research projects funded by UKRI, the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG), and the Austrian National Bank (OeNB).