MIT Sloan Finance Professors to Fundraise for Center for Finance and Policy

Finance professors at the MIT Sloan School of Management will conduct a series of high-level seminars in London and Shanghai as part of efforts to raise funds for a new center that will examine the intersection between finance and government, the Financial Times reports today. To date, MIT has raised almost half of the $10 million needed for the center, according to the FT.

The MIT Center for Finance and Policy is intended to serve as a hub of research and financial analysis of public policy issues, bringing together top thinkers and spurring collaboration between government, the private sector and academia. “Finance is one field where academia and business are very close,” Sloan Deputy Dean S.P. Kothari told the FT. The center will take a cross-disciplinary approach to tackling the government challenges facing finance and banking, resulting in research that will have implications for every household, Kothari added.

One of very few multi-disciplinary institutions focused on finance research, the MIT Sloan center will be global in its focus. “We want the center to have a global outlook. We want participants to be global in terms of research and governance,” Kothari told the FT.

Andrei Kirilenko, former Chief Economist of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and a renowned expert on automated financial markets, will co-direct the new Center for Finance and Policy with colleagues Andrew Lo, head of the MIT Laboratory for Financial Engineering, and Deborah Lucas, professor of finance, the school announced earlier this year. Kirilenko joined the Sloan faculty as professor of the practice of finance in February.

Read the complete Financial Times article, “MIT Finance Centre to Focus on Government Policy