Aleš Michl (born 18 October 1977) is a Czech economist and the fifth Governor of the Czech National Bank.
He has been a member of the Czech National Bank's Board since 1 December 2018, and was appointed Governor by the President of the Czech Republic, effective from 1 July 2022, for a six-year term.
Michl is a former commercial bank investment strategist and co-founder of an algorithmic asset-management fund. He is the author of academic and popular articles and books on economics and the popularisation of mathematics. He holds a PhD in finance.
Education
Michl earned his Ph.D. in finance from the Prague University of Economics and Business (VŠE) in 2020, having graduated with a master's degree from the same institution in 2002.[1] In 2005, he completed a training programme on game theory and the psychology of decision-making at the Summer School of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and in 2009, he took an investment portfolio management course at the Wharton School in Philadelphia.[1]
Michl worked as an economic and investment strategist at Raiffeisenbank from 2006 to 2015.[1] He co-founded an algorithmic asset-management fund specialising in US stocks and the Czech money market.[1] He later sold his share in the fund and ceased all investment activities due to his position at the Czech National Bank.[4] Additionally, from 2014 to 2018, he served as an external economic advisor to the Czech Ministry of Finance, focusing on macroeconomic analysis and government debt stabilisation.[1] During this time, the Czech Republic recorded budget surpluses in public finances for three consecutive years.[5] He has been a member of the Czech National Bank's Board since 1 December 2018.[6]
Governor
Michl was appointed Governor of the Czech National Bank (CNB) by the President of the Czech Republic, effective from 1 July 2022, for a six-year term.[6] Since assuming the role of governor, he has navigated the institution through a period of significant economic challenges. When Michl took office, inflation in the Czech Republic stood at a staggering 17.5%, peaking at 18% a few months later[7] - the highest rate since the transition to a market economy in the 1990s.[8] Additionally, the bank was dealing with the largest loss in its history,[9] prompting the need for rationalisation and cost-cutting measures.
In his speech upon being appointed Governor in mid-2022,[10][11] Michl pledged to bring inflation under control within two years. He emphasised the need to maintain higher interest rates than those seen in the past decade, advocating for an economy driven by savings rather than debt. Under his leadership, the bank's strategy in combating inflation expanded to include a strong koruna policy, which reduced the cost of importing expensive raw materials at the time, and, in turn, helped lower inflation.[12] By spring 2023, the CNB had achieved the strictest monetary conditions in two decades, with the koruna reaching its strongest level in history.[13] In February and March 2024, the CNB successfully reduced year-on-year inflation to the target of 2%, a level not seen since December 2018.[14] This marked the restoration of price stability, fulfilling the bank's legal mandate. Michl has emerged as one of the first central bankers in Europe to deliver on this goal.[15]
Under Michl's leadership, the CNB began purchasing gold and increasing the share of equities in its foreign exchange reserves. The goal of these actions is to enhance the expected return on the bank's assets so that, in the future, these returns will exceed the expected costs of liabilities, thereby enabling the bank to recover from its financial losses.[16][13]
Additionally, under his leadership, the CNB reduced its workforce in 2023 for the first time in ten years, as Michl inherited an institution facing record operational expenditure growth. In response, a comprehensive rationalisation effort was undertaken in 2023, which included reducing the top management team from seventeen to fourteen directors and decreasing the total number of positions by 5.1% - the first such large-scale reduction in a decade.[17]
For the first time in its history, the bank commissioned an external review of its monetary policy, the results were published in November 2024.[18]
Publications
Key speeches
The Road to the Target I (Speech at the University of Economics and Business in Prague, Discussion on Inflation: The Road to the Target)[19]
The Road to the Target II (Speech at the Assembly of Members of the Czech Banking Association)[20]
Aleš Michl: The Current Level of Inflation Still Makes it Impossible to Lower Interest Rates (Speech delivered during the Discussion of the Financial Market Supervision Report for 2022 in the Senate of the Czech Republic)[21]
The Road to the Target III (Speech at the Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Discussion on Inflation: The Road to the Target)[12]
The Target (The Governor's speech at the CNB Discussion Forum in Pardubice)[13]
Taming Inflation from 18 to 2% and Paving the Way for ESG Financing (Governor Aleš Michl's Address to the Central Banking Summer Meetings Conference in London)[22]
Books
MICHLiq - průvodce ekonomií a investicemi (A Guide to Economics and Investment), 2014[23]
^ abcMichl, Aleš (23 April 2024). The target (Speech). CNB Discussion Forum 2024. Czech National Bank. University of Pardubice, Pardubice. Retrieved 5 June 2024.
^Michl, Aleš (2014). MICHLiq: Inteligentní průvodce ekonomikou [A Guide to Economics and Investment] (in Czech). Prague: R Media. ISBN978-80-905629-2-9.
^Michl, Aleš (2019). Jestřábi a holubice [Hawks and Doves] (in Czech). Prague: Pragma. ISBN978-80-7617-917-2.
^Michl, Aleš (2021). Reset ekonomiky - Co nás čeká po covid-19? [How to Reset the Economy] (in Czech). Prague: Universum. ISBN978-80-242-7689-2.
^MICHL, Aleš. Ten Years Later: Lessons for DSGE Builders and Czech Policy Makers. Review of Economic Perspectives's Cover Image Review of Economic Perspectives. 2019, roč. 19, č. 3, s. 159 - 174
^MICHL, Aleš. New Euro Convergence Criteria. Online. Politická ekonomie. 2016, roč. 64, č. 6, s. 713-729. ISSN 0032-3233. Dostupné z: https://doi.org/10.18267/j.polek.1105. [cit. 2024-08-23]
