Dr. Thom Wetzer

Biography

Thom Wetzer is an Associate Professor of Law and Finance at the University of Oxford and the Founding Director of the Oxford Sustainable Law Programme. His research explores the alignment of private initiative with the public good, focusing on how legal and financial mechanisms can address, or fail to address, governance challenges arising from externalities, particularly in relation to climate change and financial stability. Wetzer's work integrates traditional legal scholarship with multidisciplinary analysis and has been published in leading legal, economic, and scientific journals, including Science and Nature. He is co-editor of the Handbook on Financial Stress Testing published by Cambridge University Press in 2022. Wetzer also actively collaborates with and advises various entities, including governments, central banks, and international institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank. At Oxford, he co-leads the Net Zero Regulation Policy Hub and is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking. He has taught at prestigious universities including Yale and Stanford and has educated high-level officials in the public and private sectors. In 2023, he received the inaugural Teaching Excellence Award from the Smith School. Wetzer holds a DPhil as a Clarendon Scholar and an MSc in Law and Finance from the University of Oxford, and a BA(Hons) LLB from Utrecht University. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia Law School and Yale University, and previously worked with the European Commission and Goldman Sachs.

Research Interests

Experience