Kern has served in senior roles in public policy and financial regulation and has advised regulators, policymakers and politicians for the British Parliament, the Swiss Finance Ministry, the European Parliament, the International Monetary Fund, and the United Nations Environment Office.  

Kern gave testimony to the British House of Lords Committee on Financial Service Regulation on 9 October 2024. In his testimony Prof. Alexander discusses the difference between primary and secondary objectives in financial regulation and how to manage secondary objectives while achieving primary objectives Full Recording of Session.

Kern served as Specialist Advisor for the UK Parliamentary Joint Select Committee on the Financial Services Act 2012 that reviewed the the draft Financial Services legislation. I was also Specialist Advisor for the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs (chair Lord Wakeham) and submitted oral and written evidence critically reviewing UK economic sanctions policy. In addition, he gave invited oral and written evidence to the House of Common Treasury Committee on the following topics: 1) European Union financial regulation and supervision reforms, and 2) UK financial regulation and supervision reforms.  He also gave invited evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on Economic Affairs on how UK Banking Regulation and Supervision could be reformed.  He was also invited to give evidence to the House of Lords Europe Subcommittee on the review of the European Supervisory Authorities and the proposed legislation to authorize the European Central Bank to become a bank supervisor.  From 2013 to 2019, he served as an expert adviser to the British Serious Fraud Office on their investigations of the manipulation of the London Inter-bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) and worked closely with SFO prosecutors in several high-profile cases.   

Kern advised the Swiss Finance Ministry in 2013-14 on Switzerland’s role in international financial policy and its relationship to the G20. As part of his work, he prepared a report (later published as an article) questioning the legitmacy of G20 decisionmaking and its impact on non-G20 countries and called for the need for enhanced legitimacy and accountability in international financial standard setting and policymaking.

Kern has worked with the International Monetary Fund over the years as an advisor and has been invited to present his research at IMF conferences and high-level workshops.  In October 2006, he gave a keynote lecture on global financial governance and regulating systemic risk to the IMF annual conference.  This lecture discussed many of the ideas on the weaknesses in banking and financial regulation that would lead to the global financial crisis in 2007-08. These arguments are set forth in Alexander’s (co-author) seminal work Global Governance of Financial system: The International Regulation of Systemic Risk (Oxford Univ. Press, 2006). Link

The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision invited Kern in January 2015 to present his path-breaking report ‘Stability and Sustainability in Banking Reform: Are Environmental Risks Missing in the Basel Accord? (2014), which spawned a new area of research in international banking regulation and environmental sustainability, and was translated into 6 languages.

Kern was also invited by the Bank for International Settlements Research Department to present his research on theories of macroprudential financial regulation (October 2015) and was invited again by the BIS to present his research on banking regulation and environmental sustainability (January 2017).

The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development commissioned Kern in 2021 to write a report on international financial regulation and cross-border trade in financial services.  The report was issued in the summer 2022. 

In 2022, Kern worked with the IMF Legal Department and Capital Markets Division and presented a paper at a IMF high level workshop on how the Fund should advise IMF member countries regarding central bank policies and banking regulation addressing climate change risks.