Finance faculty at the University of Georgia hosted researchers from half a dozen universities — including Yale, Stanford and the London School of Business — this past weekend to share ground-breaking finance scholarship and top-ranked football.
This is the second year the Terry College of Business Department of Finance has hosted the UGA Fall Finance Conference. The first day featured top-ranked researchers presenting their work, with the second including a tailgate reception and a UGA football game.
“This year, we received more than 100 submissions to present, so it’s not easy to be here,” Zhongjin Lu, conference organizer and an associate professor of finance, told participants as he welcomed them on Sept. 6.
Lu led a team of 15 finance faculty members who gathered to make the conference happen.
“This conference provides a forum to elevate the research of our UGA faculty as well as those from premier institutions around the world,” said John Campbell, the Herbert E. Miller Chair in Financial Accounting and head of the finance department. “It also ensures our faculty stay on the cutting edge of rapid advancements in the field of finance and can bring that expertise with them to the classroom for the benefit of our students.”
This year’s presenters included:
- Kelly Shue from Yale University presenting “Categorical Thinking about Interest Rates”
- Joseph Kalmenovitz from University of Rochester presenting “Much Ado About Nothing? Overreaction to Random Regulatory Audits”
- Alan Moreira from University of Rochester presenting “Asset Purchase Rules: How QE Transformed the Bond Market”
- Rebecca De Simone from the London Business School presenting “Opening the Brown Box: Production Responses to Environmental Regulation”
- Alexander Zentefis from Stanford University presenting “Bank Branch Access: Evidence from Geolocation Data”
James Weston, the Harmon Whittington Professor of Finance at Rice University, won the conference’s top prize for best discussant for his critique of Zentefis’s paper. William Mann, assistant professor of finance at Emory University, took the second-place best discussant award for his critique of Kalmenovitz’s paper.