The world’s best PhDs in finance
CBS will soon host the ceremony “AQR Top Finance Graduate Award at CBS”, providing the opportunity to experience some of the world’s most promising talents with a PhD in finance when they present their research at the event. CBS Professor Lasse Heje Pedersen, who chairs the award’s selection committee, describes it as the World Cup for PhD theses in finance.
“In contrast to the World Cup, however, we choose more than one winner. The committee comprises the foremost researchers in the field from top universities abroad. We jointly identify six PhDs who we believe to be the most promising globally,” explains Heje Pedersen about the event taking place on 30 May.
The prize, awarded three times previously, will be given again this year at CBS, where the six winners will present their research.
This year's winners:
- Asaf Bernstein, MIT Sloan School of Management: Household Debt Overhang and Labor Supply
- Arpit Gupta, Columbia Business School: Foreclosure Contagion and the Neighborhood Spillover Effects of Mortgage Defaults
- Elisabeth Kempf, Tilburg University: The Job Rating Game: The Effects of Revolving Doors on Analyst Incentives
- Song Ma, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business: The Life Cycle of Corporate Venture Capital
- David Schoenherr, London Business School: Political Connections and Allocative Distortions
- Michael Schwert, Stanford Graduate School of Business: Bank Capital and Lending Relationships
“We would like to recognise the best graduate students in the world while also having the opportunity to meet them here at CBS so they can get to know each other and develop a network and collaboration with CBS researchers. What’s more, we would like to provide our students with inspiration. They get a feel for what the best is and what aiming high means,” says Heje Pedersen.
The winners are chosen based on who the selection committee believes will have the greatest impact on financial practice and academia in the future. According to Heje Pedersen, the influence of the prize winners will be highly visible:
“Finance research is widely used and can have a really big effect on which securities are traded, on how pension funds put together their portfolios, on how banks operate, and on how financial supervisory authorities regulate.”
The global investment firm AQR awards the prize with the Center for Financial Frictions (FRIC) and the CBS Department of Finance. AQR also sponsors the USD 10,000 prize given to the winners.
Read more about the event and register by 13:00 Monday 23 May at the latest
Read more about the individual winners and their research