Economic Strategies

“I want to have influence and make things happen,” says economist Basil Odermatt. “I’m less interested in academic research.” For the last two years, he’s been at the research and consultancy firm econcept, working on things like economic strategies for towns and cantons, and more precisely the 2050 net-zero carbon targets decided by the federal government. In this role, he’s been helped by his flair for figures and statistics, which has run like a thread through his professional career. Already before and during his studies at UZH, he worked in banking. Then he got the opportunity to examine the influence of various subsidy programs on animal health at the agricultural research institute Agroscope. He wasn’t interested in a PhD because the practical relevance would have been secondary and he would have had to focus on a specific topic. “I’m interested in the bigger picture,” explains Odermatt. After a sortie into the IT industry, he joined econcept, where he has already become established as a project manager and data science expert. “I like the variety of the tasks and the fact that I learn something new every day.”

Stefan Stöcklin