News and Honors Archive

Finance Group Press Clippings

Innovation Risk: How to Make Smarter Decisions: Professor Robert Merton is interviewed by the Investment Management Consultants Association on "Harnessing the Building Blocks of Economic Valuation" in the latest issue of The Journal of Investment Consulting. More >>
Andrew Lo: Thinking about health as an investor: A new study by Professor Andrew Lo, James Watkins and Dimitrios Bias shows that investment in disease research brings significant returns and that there is significant variation among diseases, with some harder to diagnose and treat. More >>
Xavier Giroud: The Ultimate Value Add: Thanks to hard-to-obtain access to plant-level data retained by the U.S. Census Bureau, MIT Sloan School of Management Prof. Xavier Giroud recently found that companies invest more in plants located closer to headquarters and that those plants tend to be more productive. But proximity, he says, needs to be defined by travel time, not geographic distance. More >>
Professor Andrew Lo: Risk allocation reduces volatility surprises: In an interview with InvestmentNews, Professor Andrew Lo discusses how investors can reduce the surprises in risk through asset allocation. More >>
Boom or Bust? Which environment your career began in can shape your career: That's according to MIT Sloan researchers Antoinette Schoar and Luo Zuo. In their working paper, "Shaped by Booms and Busts: How the Economy Impacts CEO Careers and Management Style," Schoar and Zuo write that the CEOs who enter the labor market during an economic downturn tend to enjoy less success than those who begin careers in a buoyant economy. More >>
Schoar: The case for unwinding Fannie and Freddie: "Unwinding Fannie and Freddie over a period of time seems the best way to go. This could happen through restructuring the overall loan support that is provided or by lowering the CLL every year by a preset amount", explains Professor Antoinette Schoar in a recently published article. More >>
Deborah Lucas: Student loans: Welcome to subprime university: Deborah Lucas, MIT Sloan Professor of Finance, recently talked to fortune magazine about government credit programs. More >>
Merton says hedge funds not contributing to EU crisis: Professor Robert Merton talks about possible risks posed by hedge funds to financial markets, and Europe's sovereign debt crisis at the MIT Sloan CFO Summit. More >>
Merton: The Black-Scholes Model in Context: An interview with Professor Robert Merton on the history and origins of the option pricing model was recently published in Nekst, the quarterly magazine of Asset | Econometrics. More >>
Lo: NYC 2010 financial engineering annual conference: MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo will participate as a panelist at the 2010 International Association of Financial Engineers Annual Conference. More >>
Lo: An alarming ride on Wall Street: "It was pretty breathtaking," said MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo after the Dow experienced its worst single trading day of the past year. "People are uncertain about many things, and what we saw today was that uncertainty playing out." More >>
Lo: Janus's Intech to revise stock-picking after client outflows: "From a marketing perspective, they need to differentiate their process going forward in order to stem the tide of these outflows," says MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo regarding Janus Capital Group Inc.'s recent client withdrawals of $6.7 billion. More >>
Lo: Economists need their own uncertainty principle: This story on a recent paper co-authored by MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo describes his proposal for a five-tiered categorization of uncertainty to more effectively understand and calculate risk in economic systems. More >>
Lo: Making allocation more complete: "What we thought was diversified became very highly correlated because of the global integration of the financial markets. Assets we thought were uncorrelated have moved together, so we have to be much more thoughtful about asset allocation," says MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo. More >>
Lo: Back to nature: "Economies evolve, dictated by the behaviours of individuals, who learn from experience and positive feedback," explains MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo in a story on the use of biological ecology principles in financial models. More >>
Lo: The financial industry needs its own crash safety board: MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo authored this opinion piece supporting the creation of a "Capital Markets Safety Board" (CMSB) patterned after the National Transportation Safety Board, dedicated to investigating, reporting, and archiving the "accidents' of the financial industry." More >>
Lo: Evaluating and preventing a massive financial crisis [Video]: In this TV interview, MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo says, "The first thing I think we ought to do is to create an independent agency, whose sole function is to sift through the wreckage of every financial disaster, and to be able to produce publicly available reports as to what happened, why it happened, and what may need to be done in order to prevent it from happening again." More >>
Lo: The best econ book I've read recently: Andrew Lo, director of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, posted his commentary on a recent economics book in this online Q+A. More >>
Lo: Cat and mouse: "Maybe we should provide more government support for financial PhDs, as we already do for engineers, so the pay scales would seem less skewed and government service not look such a poor choice," says MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo. More >>
Lo: Why economists hate physicists: Why are economists so bad at making forecasts?: "In physics, it takes three laws to explain 99% of the data; in finance, it takes more than 99 laws to explain about 3%," says MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo. More >>
Lo: Gambling with house money: MIT Sloan Prof. Andrew Lo discusses the pros and cons of proprietary trading in light of proposed strict new regulations on banks. "We have to recognize that proprietary trading has a number of positive benefits, which if we end up constraining it, we will have to face those consequences," he says. More >>
Schoar: Why changing the CEO may not change the company: MIT Sloan Prof. Antoinette Schoar explains why the best CEOs manage to make struggling businesses more profitable just 60% of the time. She says, "Our results show that managers do matter, but they don't change everything." More >>
Bouwman: What capital does for banks: MIT Sloan Visiting Professor Christa Bouwman analyzed a quarter century of US bank performance data to determine how capital affected banks' profitability, market share, and ability to survive. More >>

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Finance Group Honors

Professor Andrew Lo elected to the Academy of Arts and Sciences: Andrew Lo, Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor, is one of the 198 new members elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Members of the Academy include some of the worldâs most accomplished scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and civic, corporate, and philanthropic leaders. More >>
Professor Leonid Kogan wins 2013 Crowell Second Prize from PanAgora Asset Management's Quantitative Research Institute: MIT Sloan Professor of Finance Leonid Kogan won for his paper "Technological Innovation, Resource Allocation, and Growth" co-authored with D. Papanikolaou of Kellogg, A. Seru of Chicago Booth, and N. Stoffman of Indiana University's Kelley School of Business. The prize, which recognizes contributions to the field of quantitative asset management, provides a forum for new and cutting-edge research that connects theory and practice, in support of the continued development of the science of economics. The prize is named in honor of PanAgora's founder, the late Dr. Richard A. Crowell, a pioneer in the field of quantitative investing. More >>
MIT Sloan faculty win first and second Roger F. Murray Prize from the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance: Mark Kritzman, Senior Lecturer at MIT Sloan, won the Roger F. Murray Prize for his presentation entitled "Systemic Risk: Applications for Investors and Policy Makers" (co-authored with William Kinlaw and David Turkington of State Street). Professors Jun Pan and Jiang Wang were awarded second prize for their presentation of "Noise as Information for Illiquidity" (co-authored with Grace Xing Hu, University of Hong Kong). More >>
Professor Antoinette Schoar named one of the top 10 academics by aiCIO magazine: MIT Sloan Professor Antoinette Schoar has been named one of the top 10 academics influencing the institutional investment industry by aiCIO magazine. Schoar joins a group of academics who have significantly aided pensions, endowments, foundations, and sovereign wealth funds, as well as institutional investors who are fulfilling their obligations to stakeholders. More >>
Professor Stewart Myers awarded honorary degree by Lancaster University: Lancaster University awarded an honorary degree to one of the world's most distinguished financial economists - Professor Stewart C. Myers - at December's graduation ceremonies. More >>
Professor Steve Ross has been awarded the $200,000 2012 Onassis Prize for Finance: This prestigious honor recognizes Professor Ross' significant lifetime contributions to the field: "Professor Ross is best known for having invented 'arbitrage pricing theory' and the 'theory of agency.' He is also celebrated as the co-discoverer of 'risk neutral pricing' and of the 'binomial model' for pricing derivatives." More >>
Andrew Lo has won the first-ever Harry M. Markowitz Award with co-author Mark T. Mueller: Andrew Lo has won the first-ever Harry M. Markowitz Award with co-author Mark T. Mueller for their paper "Warning: Physics Envy May Be Hazardous to Your Wealth!" The award honors the best paper appearing in the Journal of Investment Management (JOIM) during 2010. Sponsored jointly by JOIM and New Frontier Advisors, LLC, the award was established to honor the legacy of Dr. Markowitz's work and its seminal impact on both theoretical finance and the practice of asset management, as well as to support future research and innovation in practical investment management. Papers were judged based on their practical significance, technical excellence, and theoretical quality. More >>
Adrien Verdelhan was the First Prize recipient of the Terker Family Prizes in Investment Research: Adrien Verdelhan (with co-authors Hanno Lustig of UCLA Anderson and Nikolai Roussanov of Wharton) was the First Prize recipient of the Terker Family Prizes in Investment Research for the period June 1, 2008 - May 31, 2009. More >>
Stew Myers is a co-winner of the 2009 III Edition of the Jaime Fernández de Araoz Corporate Finance Award: Stew Myers is a co-winner of the 2009 III Edition of the Jaime Fernandez de Araoz Corporate Finance Award, which was created to encourage the development of knowledge within the field of corporate finance by rewarding individuals or teams that contribute to this field through their research work or applied experience. The award was for the paper "The Internal Governance of Firms" (joint with Viral V. Acharya and Raghuram Rajan), for opening new and pathbreaking insights into corporate governance structures which had not been explored up to date in the classical agency theory perspective, as well as opening very promising research possibilities for scholarly work in this area. More >>
Antoinette Schoar has received the Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship: Antoinette Schoar has received the Ewing Marion Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship. This award was established by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in 2005 to inspire promising young scholars to contribute new insight to entrepreneurship. The honor, which includes a cash prize, is awarded every two years to one scholar younger than 40 "whose research has made a significant contribution to the literature in entrepreneurship." More >>
Stew Myers has been appointed as a Research Fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI): Myers's appointment was announced earlier this month at the ECGI's General Assembly in Barcelona. The ECGI, which was founded in 2002, is an international scientific non-profit association. It provides a forum for debate and dialogue between academics, legislators and practitioners, focusing on major corporate governance issues and thereby promoting best practice. More >>
Leonid Kogan and co-authors have won the 2007 Crowell Memorial First Prize for their working paper, "Durability of Output and Expected Stock Returns.": Leonid Kogan and co-authors Motohiro Yogo and Joao Gomes have won the 2007 Crowell Memorial First Prize for their working paper, "Durability of Output and Expected Stock Returns." PanAgora Asset Management sponsors the Crowell Prize to support academic research that furthers the field of quantitative management and to provide "a forum for new and cutting-edge research that bridges the gap between theory and practice." More >>
John Cox has been elected Fellow of the American Finance Association: John Cox has been elected Fellow of the American Finance Association. The purpose of the Society of Fellows of the Association is to recognize those members who have made a distinguished contribution to the field of finance. More >>
Carola Frydman has been named Faculty Fellow in the NBER Development of the American Economy Program: Carola Frydman has been named Faculty Fellow in the NBER Development of the American Economy Program. More >>
Leonid Kogan was named Associate Professor with tenure: Leonid Kogan was named Associate Professor with tenure as of July 1, 2004, announced Richard Schmalensee, John C Head III Dean. Formerly an assistant professor at MIT Sloan, Kogan studies asset pricing theory, derivatives, and investment. He received his PhD in finance from MIT Sloan in 1999. More >>
Faculty members win 2006 Smith Breeden Prize: Leonid Kogan, Steve Ross, Jiang Wang, and Mark Westerfield (not pictured) won the 2006 Smith Breeden Prize (first prize) for their Journal of Finance paper, "The Price Impact and Survival of International Traders." This prize is awarded to the best paper in areas other than corporate finance. More >>
Stew Myers has been honored by being named by the Financial Management Association as one of two FMA Fellows for the year 2005.: Stew Myers has been honored by being named by the Financial Management Association as one of two FMA Fellows for the year 2005. Professor Myers's research has concentrated on the theory and practice of corporate finance, including the role of information and incentives in corporate financing and methods for evaluating corporate investments. More >>
A paper co-authored by Stew Myers has won the FAME Research Prize for 2005.: A paper co-authored by Stew Myers, R2 Around the World: New Theory and New Tests has won the FAME Research Prize for 2005, has won the FAME Research Prize for 2005. The FAME Foundation is a non-for-profit institution created in 1997 in Geneva, Switzerland, to promote high-level education and research in the areas of financial asset management and financial engineering. The founders are bankers in the Lake Geneva area, Reuters, the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne, and the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva. More >>
Stephen Ross and Leonid Kogan, with co-authors Jiang Wang and Mark Wester, were awarded the FAME prize: Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics Stephen Ross and Associate Professor Leonid Kogan, with co-authors Jiang Wang and Mark Wester, were awarded the FAME prize (International Center for Financial Management and Engineering) for their paper "The Price Impact and Survival of Irrational Traders." More >>
Antoinette Schoar, along with her co-author Josh Lerner, won the NASDAQ Best Paper Prize: Maurice F. Strong Fund Career Development Chair Antoinette Schoar, along with her co-author Josh Lerner, won the NASDAQ Best Paper Prize for "Private Equity in the Developing World: The Determinants of Transaction Structures." The award was presented at the Western Finance Association meeting. More >>

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