Program for Financial Studies
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Key Initiatives
The Program for Financial Studies supports research through six focus initiatives, and encourages the creation, translation, and dissemination of research from cross-disciplinary faculty members by coordinating access to computing and data resources; providing research support and assistance; sponsoring membership to professional organizations; overseeing fellowships and grants; and facilitating the integration of research into the MBA curriculum.
New Technologies in Finance
Directors: Simona Abis & Anton Lines, Assistant Professors of Business (Finance)
Director: Geoffrey Heal, Donald C. Waite III Professor of Social Enterprise
Assistant Director: Kent Daniel, William von Mueffling Professor of Business
The Climate Change and Finance initiative seeks to understand how a changing climate and the policies directed at mitigating climate change will affect American business, with particular emphasis on the financial sector. Examples of key research questions: Which industries will be affected by climate change, and how will this impact their strategic choices? What policy options are available at the federal and state levels, and what will be their consequences for business? What are the risks associated with climate change, and how are markets reacting to these risks? Can the exposure of mortgage underwriters and insurance companies to coastal properties be a source of systemic financial risk?
Directors: Lawrence Glosten, S. Sloan Colt Professor of Banking and International Finance
Charles Jones, Robert W. Lear Professor of Finance and Economics and Senior Vice Dean
The structure of trading securities, and the activities of brokers and dealers, have undergone dramatic changes in recent years as the result of technological changes, globalization, and new regulatory initiatives. Given those changes, and in particular the decline of the New York Stock Exchange’s market share of global trading, how will New York evolve as a global financial center? To what extent is regulation advantaging or disadvantaging the United States as a location for initial public offerings, and for securities trading more broadly?
Future of Banking and Insurance
Director: Charles Calomiris, Henry Kaufman Professor of Financial Institutions
Assistant Director: Urooj Khan, The Class of 1967 Associate Professor of Business
Globalization, the recent financial crisis and the regulatory response to it, as well as technological advances, are shaping the structure of the banking and insurance industries. What are likely future changes in regulation, industrial structure, and profitability? How do they affect value creation, risk and hence the values of the businesses in these industries?
Director: Harry Mamaysky, Associate Professor of Professional Practice
Assistant Directors: Paul Glasserman, Jack R. Anderson Professor of Business
Paul Tetlock, A. Barton Hepburn Professor of Economics in the Faculty of Business
The News and Finance initiative of the PFS addresses one of the key questions in financial economics: how information is transmitted from news into prices. The initiative seeks to combine natural language processing techniques with more traditional economic analysis to gain insight into how markets respond to news and other textual data. Examples of questions of interest to the initiative include the following:
- How can the computer analysis of news, social media, public filings, and other documents be leveraged to develop investment strategies and monitor risk?
- What insights about investor behavior can be gleaned from the analysis of market responses to news?
- What new types of tools for text analysis are needed for applications in finance?
Director: Paul Glasserman, Jack R. Anderson Professor of Business
How should non-financial firms, financial intermediaries, and regulators measure, manage and regulate risk? Recent innovations in quantitative methods, and the experience of heightened volatility in recent years, have created new interest in integrating strategic thinking about capital budgeting with the technical challenges of risk management. These technical challenges have empowered risk managers in organizations, and given new impetus for prioritizing the efficient and prudent management of resources, as well as improving the measurement and regulation of risk within financial intermediaries.