The 2026 Annual Berkowitz Lecture, The Multilateral Trading System: Resilience, Erosion, and the Role of Middle Powers, will be delivered by Ralph Ossa, Chief Economist of the Word Trade Organization (WTO) from January 2023 to June 2025.
Ralph Ossa holds a UBS Foundation Professorship in Economics. From January 2023 until June 2025 he served as Chief Economist of the Word Trade Organization. His research focuses on international economics with a particular emphasis on questions of policy relevance. For example, he has explored the economics of trade wars and trade talks and estimated how much countries gain from international trade. For his project “Deep Integration Agreements”, Ossa received an ERC Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council. He was chairman of the Department of Economics between 2019-2022 and co-editor of the Journal of International Economics between 2016-2022. Prior to moving to Zurich, he served on the faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He holds a PhD in Economics from the London School of Economics.
The Berkowitz Lecture Series is presented by the Master of Financial Economics (MFE) Program in memory of Michael Berkowitz (1946 – 2004), former Department of Economics Chair and founder of the Master of Financial Economics program.
- Date: Thursday, March 12, 2026
- Time: 6:30 PM – 7:30 PM