PhD – A rigorous financial curriculum

EDHEC Business School’s PhD in Finance balances coursework and a dissertation to help participants acquire the tools, approaches and experience to become autonomous researchers and innovators.

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This is an academically rigorous programme that prepares professionals for challenges that require an integrated view of financial markets and institutions, a thorough understanding of financial modelling and decision-making, and an ability to identify and research issues to propose and implement creative solutions. 

Classes, research workshops and presentations take place in the EDHEC’s e-learning classrooms to allow remote and asynchronous access.
 

Core courses

 

Core courses equip participants with robust training in financial theory and state-of- the-art analytical and research methods.

Core courses are delivered in the first year of the programme to provide candidates with a thorough knowledge of financial theory and literature and solid comprehension of advanced analytical and research methods in financial economics. In this way, participants can decide on a specialisation and refine their research projects.

Each course is 15 or 25 hours long and offered from EDHEC’s Nice and/or London campuses. The following five core courses are mandatory:
 

This course looks at the theoretical foundations of modern financial economics. Its main themes include individual consumption and investment decisions under uncertainty, mean-variance theory, the consumption-based capital asset pricing model, long-run risks and the term structures of equity premia, empirical asset pricing models, and the term structure of interest rates. It covers both traditional theories and recent advances and applies basic concepts in the discrete time framework to risky asset valuations.

This course provides a solid understanding of some of the econometric methodologies most used in academic research in finance. It focuses on linear models for time-series, cross-sectional and panel data.

This course is the starting point for conducting research into theoretical or empirical corporate finance. The course will provide a framework for understanding and further developing the determinants of corporate policy, including financing, investment, risk management and dividends. We will analyze the economic determinants of corporate policy and discuss the quantitative implementation.

This course covers continuous-time tools for pricing financial derivatives, modelling the term structure of interest rates and valuing interest rate-sensitive claims, optimal consumption and portfolio choices, and dynamic asset pricing in equilibrium.

This course introduces participants to advanced estimation methods for econometric models used in modern theories of financial markets. The course applied focus is mainly on asset pricing, especially explaining the time series and cross-sectional properties of equity returns. The lectures aim at providing the foundational methodological elements necessary to understand the statistical theory, complementing them with numerical implementation tools and empirical illustrations in relevant finance applications.

Elective research seminars

 

Top scholars teach the latest research advances or subjects of great topical interest. 

PhD candidates select five or more elective seminars offered in London and Nice and attend research workshops and presentations to acquire an intimate and detailed understanding of the most recent theoretical and modelling advances in their field of specialisation.

For 2024-25, the catalogue of elective research seminars is as follows :

  • Production-based asset pricing: theory and empirics
  • Spectral asset pricing 
  • Models and methods in macro-finance
  • Quantitative methods for macro-asset pricing
  • Fixed Income
  • Household Finance
  • Alternative risk premia and replication of financial anomalies
  • Market microstructure
  • Sustainable Finance with emphasis on impact investing
  • Machine Learning in Asset Pricing 
  • Climate Finance 

Elective research seminar is 15 hours in duration. PhD candidates need to take a minimum of five electives to meet the course elective requirement and are free to participate in additional electives.

Research presentation series

 

PhD candidates communicate the progress of their dissertation research to faculty and peers at two formal presentations.

PhD_Finance_dissertation_thesis

Over the course of the programme, each PhD candidate is required to make two research presentations of his/her work and to provide comments and feedback to other candidates presenting their newly developed theoretical insights and original empirical findings.

 

The research presentation series is designed to provide peer and faculty support and advice to PhD candidates working on their dissertations, as well as to hone their research presentation skills. The series is 30 hours long and is scheduled in the second and third years of the programme.
 

Dissertation

 

Dissertation topics are selected for their academic and industry relevance and in accordance with each candidate’s research interests and professional goals.

PhD in Finance Thesis Dissertation

All candidates work individually with programme faculty on dissertation topics. Comprising two or more papers, the dissertation should make a significant contribution to the body of literature in the field, advancing knowledge and practices, and should be of sufficient originality and quality for publication in leading peer-reviewed journals.
Dissertation work starts in the first year of the programme with the drafting of a proposal to be submitted at the beginning of the second year. Thesis work intensifies as course requirements wane. PhD candidates are required to communicate the progress of their dissertation research to faculty and peers at two formal presentations in the second and third years of the programme.

The dissertation should be completed and defended at the end of the third year of the programme. During all phases of the dissertation process, candidates work closely with their adviser.
 

PhD Theses defended at EDHEC

Research workshops

 

Faculty and guest scholars present and discuss their ongoing research work. PhD candidates further their knowledge of current research and prepare for future research presentations. 

 

Forthcoming research seminars

 

  • April 17, 2024: Lukas Schmid (Marshall School of Business, Univ. of Southern California), "Passive Demand and Active Supply: Evidence from Maturity-mandated Corporate Bond Funds” 
  • April 25, 2024: Pat Akey (Rotman School of Management, Univ. of Toronto), tba
  • May 16, 2024: Cecilia Bustamante (University of Maryland), tba
  • May 22, 2024: Raman Uppal (EDHEC Business School), "What is Missing in Asset-Pricing Factor Models?"
  • May 22, 2024: Peter Nyberg (Aalto University), tba
  • May 23, 2024: Philipp Krueger (University of Geneva), tba
  • May 30, 2024: Marco Grotteria (London Business School), tba
     
  • April 9, 2024: Giovanna Nicodano (Univ. of Torino), "Hedging Permanent Income Shocks" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • April 9, 2024: Jamie Coen (Imperial College London, "Price Discrimination and Mortgage Choice" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • April 4, 2024: Per Strömberg (Stockholm School of Economics), "Climate Policy and Firm Efficiency: Lessons From the Trucking Industry"
  • April 3, 2024: Christophe Gaillac (University of Oxford), "Predicting Unobserved Individual-level Causal Effects" 
  • March 21, 2024: Dirk Jenter (London School of Economics), "Sustainable Investing: Evidence From the Field" 
  • March 20, 2024: Rodolfo Prieto (INSEAD, "Asset Pricing with Costly Short Sales"
  • March 12, 2024: Kathrin Schlafmann (Copenhagen Business School), "Expectations and Wealth Heterogeneity in the Macroeconomy" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • March 12, 2024: Peter Andre (Goethe University Frankfurt), "Mental Models of the Stock Market" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • February 13, 2024: Joel Shapiro (University of Oxford), "Sustainable Investing and Public Goods Provision" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • February 13, 2024: Theresa Spickers (University of Amsterdam), "Passive Ownership and the Environment" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • January 19, 2024: Federico Bandi (Johns Hopkins Carey Business School), "0DTE option pricing" 
  • January 17, 2024: Frederico Belo (INSEAD), "Production-based Stochastic Discount Factors"*
  • January  9, 2024: Teodor Dyakov (EDHEC Business School), "Global Production Networks and Asset Prices"
  • December 6, 2023: Alexandre Rubesam (IESEG School of Management), "It Takes Two to Tango: Economic Theory and Model Uncertainty for Equity Premium Prediction" December 7, 2023: Danielle Zhang (Oslo Business School), tba
  • December 12, 2023: Elise Gourier (ESSEC Business School), "Private Market Fund Factors" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • December 12, 2023: Gianpaolo Parise (EDHEC Business School), "Green Window Dressing" organised jointly with the CEPR
  •  December 7, 2023: Danielle Zhang (Oslo Business School), "The Future of the Past: Lasting Effects of Financial Crises on Individual Investors"
  • December 6, 2023: Alexandre Rubesam (IESEG School of Management), "It Takes Two to Tango: Economic Theory and Model Uncertainty for Equity Premium Prediction" December 7, 2023: Danielle Zhang (Oslo Business School), tba
  • November 29, 2023: Leopoldo Catania (Aarhus University), "A new way to Regime Switching Autoregressions"
  • November 23, 2023: Michela Verardo (London School of Economics), "Firms’ transition to green: Innovation and lobbying"
  • November 22, 2023: Marie Lambert (HEC Liège), "Agency Costs of Dry Powder in LBO Funds" 
  • November 16, 2023: Raman Uppal (EDHEC Business School), "Evaluating the Impact of Portfolio Mandates"
  • November 14, 2023: Marcin Kacperczyk (Imperial College), "The CO2 Question: Technical Progress and the Climate Crisis" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • November 14, 2023: Mathijs van Dijk (Rotterdam School of Management), "Climate Change and Long-Horizon Portfolio Choice: Combining Insights from Theory and Empirics" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • November 8, 2023: Aristide Houndetoungan (Cy Cergy Paris University), "Inference for Two-Stage Extremum Estimators"
  • November 8, 2023: Florian Berg (MIT Sloan School of Management),  "The Economic Impact of ESG Ratings"
  • October 19, 2023: Jamie Coen (Imperial College London), "Collateral Demand and Liquidity Demand in Wholesale Funding Markets" 
  • October 18, 2023: Nicola Bianco (Pompeu Fabra Barcelona), "Dynamic variable selection in high-dimensional predictive regressions"
  • October 10, 2023: Anton Korinek (University of Virginia), "Language Models and Cognitive Automation for Economic Research" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • October 10, 2023: Kevin Bryan (University of Toronto), "A User's Guide to GPT and LLMs for Economics Research" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • September 28, 2023: James CHOI (Yale School of Management), "Does Pension Automatic Enrollment Increase Debt? Evidence from a Large-Scale Natural Experiment"
  • September 21, 2023: Harjoat S. Bhamra (Imperial College London), "Leverage Dynamics and Learning about Economic Crises"
  • September 20, 2023: Ludovic Phalippou (Oxford), "Limited Partners versus Unlimited Machines: Selecting Private Equity Funds with Machine Learning Algorithms"
  • September 14, 2023: Remco Zwinkels (Free University Amsterdam), "Risk, return, and sentiment in a virtual asset market" 
  • September 12, 2023: Enrique Schroth (EDHEC Business School), "How do firms choose between growth and efficiency?"
  • June 29, 2023: Gianpaolo Parise and Mirco Rubin (EDHEC Business School, “ESG ratings manipulation by mutual funds”
  • June 22, 2023: Zacharias Sautner (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management), "Is History Repeating Itself? The (Un)predictable Past of ESG Ratings"
  • June 15, 2023: Peter Szilagyi (EDHEC Business School), “Institutional investors and the use of debt in multinational corporations”
  • June 13, 2023: Jens Kvaerner (Tilburg University), "How Did Low-Interest Rates Impact the Cash Holdings of Individual Investors and Firms?" organised jointly with the CEPR
  • June 8, 2023: Lucian A. Taylor (Wharton, University of Pennsylvania), "Green Tilts"
  • June 6, 2023: Neng Wang (Columbia Business Shool), "A p Theory of Government Debt and Taxes" (Keynote Speech - EDHEC PhD Forum 2023)
  • May 25, 2023: Olivier David Zerbib (EDHEC Business School), "When Green Investors Are Green Consumers"
  • May 23, 2023: Sean Shin (Aalto University), "The More Illiquid, The More Expensive: A Search-Based Explanation of the Illiquidity Premium"
  • May 9, 2023: Kim Fe Kramer (London School of Economics), "Bank presence and health" organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • April 19, 2023: Yacine Ait-Sahalia (Princeton University), "How and When are High-Frequency Stock Returns Predictable?"
  • April 11, 2023: Jessica Jeffers (HEC Paris), "The risk and return of impact investing funds" organised jointly with the CEPR  
  • April 4, 2023: Kris Boudt (Ghent University), "Court Shopping, Pro-Debtor Bias, and Bankruptcy Outcomes"
  • March 30, 2023: Marcin Kacperczyk (Imperial College London), "The CO2 Question: Technical Progress and the Climate Crisis"
  • March 23, 2023: Mamdouh Medhat (Dimensional Fund Advisors), "Reversals and the returns to liquidity provision"
  • March 14, 2023: Jean-Charles Rochet (University of Geneva), "Public debt and the balance sheet of the private sector" organised jointly with the CEPR
  • March 2, 2023: Mireia Giné (IESE Business School ), "Innovation: The Bright Side of Common Ownership?"
  • February 14, 2023: Pedro Barroso (Católica-Lisbon School of Business and Economics) "What explains price momentum and 52-week high momentum when they really work?", organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • February 3, 2023: Jeffrey M. Wooldridge (Michigan State), "Difference-in-Differences with Staggered Interventions"
  • February 1, 2023: Gordon M. Phillips (Tuck School of Business at Darmouth), "Intellectual Property Protection Lost and Competition: An Examination Using Machine Learning"
  • January 17, 2023: Jean-Michel Maseo (EDGHEC Business School), "Maximizing an equity portfolio excess growth rate: a new form of smart beta strategy?"
  • January 12, 2023: Enrique Schroth (EDHEC Business School), "The economic and social impact of shareholder activism"
  • December 13, 2022: Alexandru Barbu (INSEAD), "Procyclical asset management and bond risk premia", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • November 8, 2022: Carlo Schwarz (Bocconi University), "Gender gaps in academia: Global evidence over the twentieth century",
  • October 20, 2022: Michela Verardo (London School of Economics and Political Science),
  • October 18, 2022: Jeroen Rombouts (ESSEC Business School),"Fast Forecasting of Unstable Data Streams for Digital Platforms"
  • October 14, 2022: Marcin Kacperczyk (Imperial College), "Global Volatility and Firm-Level Capital Flows"
  • October 13, 2022: Arnaud Dufays (EDHEC Business School) "Factor Dynamics, Risk Premia, and Higher Moments in Multi-Factor Option Pricing Models"
  • October 12, 2022: Harrison Hong (Columbia University, "Welfare Consequences of Sustainable Finance"
  • October 11, 2022: Katrin Gödker (Bocconi University), "Disposed to be overconfident", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • September 20, 2022, Tobin Hanspal (Vienna University of Economics), "Educating Investors about Dividends"
  • July 12, 2022, Larissa Schäfer (Frankfurt School of Finance and Management), "Political Ideology and International Capital Allocation", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • June 16, 2022, Frederico Belo (Insead), "Estimating and Testing Investment-based Asset Pricing Models"
  • June 9, 2022, Melissa Porras Prado (Nova School of Business and Economics), "The Real Effects of FinTech Lending on SMEs: Evidence from Loan Applications"
  • May 12, 2022, Josef Zechner (Vienna University of Economics and Business), "The Dynamics of Corporate Debt Structure"
  • May 5, 2022, Elisa Pazaj (University of Amsterdam), "Transitory Earnings Shocks, Liquidity Constraints and Price Momentum"
  • April 12, 2022, Irina Zviadadze (HEC Paris), "Correcting Misspecified Stochastic Discount Factors", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • April 7, 2022, Vikas Agarwal (Georgia State University), "Eponymous Hedge Funds"
  • March 24, 2022, Chris Hansman (Imperial College London), "Access to Credit, Exports, and Product Quality" March 10, 2022, Milo Bianchi (Toulouse School of Economics), "Are We Becoming Greener? Life-time Experiences and Responsible Investment"
  • March 8, 2022, Claudia Custodio (Imperial College London), "Opioid Crisis and Real Estate Prices", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • February 8, 2022, Benjamin Moll (London School of Economics), "Uneven growth: Automation’s Impact on Income and Wealth Inequality", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • January 27, 2022, Andrew Patton (Duke University), "Better the Devil You Know: Improved Forecasts from Imperfect Models"
  • January 20, 2022, Stefano Giglio (Yale School of Management), "A Quantity-Based Approach to Constructing Climate Risk Hedge Portfolios"
  • January 11, 2022, Theresa Kuchler (New York University, "Social networks shape beliefs and behavior: Evidence from social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • December 14, 2021, Francesco D'Acunto (Boston University), "How Costly Are Cultural Biases? Evidence from FinTech", organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • November 11, 2021, Nicolas Crouzet, Northwestern University, "Can the cure kill the patient? Corporate Credit Interventions and Debt Overhang"
  • November 9, 2021, Magdalena Rola-Janicka (Tilburg University), "The Political Economy of Prudential Regulation", organised jointly with the CEPR 
  • November 4, 2021, Giorgia Piacentino, Columbia University, "Collateral Reallocation" 
  • October 28, 2021, David Solomon, Boston College, "Predictable Price Pressure"
  • October 21, 2021, Raman Uppal (EDHEC Business School, CEPR), "Correcting Misspecified Stochastic Discount Factors"
  • October 20, 2021, Sanjiv Das (Santa Clara University), "AI/ML in FinTech: New Paradigms"
  • October 14, 2021, Arthur Korteweg (University of Southern California, "Evaluating Private Equity from an Investor's Perspective"
  • October 12, 2021, Anastasia Girshina (Stockholm School of Economics), "Explaining Gender Gap in Real Estate Returns", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • September 30, 2021, Mirco Rubin (EDHEC Business School), "Factors Common to Individual Stock and Sorted Portfolio Returns’’
  • September 23, 2021, Pietro Veronesi (University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, NBER and CEPR), "Option-Implied Spreads and Option Risk Premia"
  • September 14, 2021, Francesco Franzoni (USI Lugano), "Avoiding Volatility: Institutional Trading Before Scheduled News", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • September 2, 2021, Nadya Malenko, University of Michigan, "Board Dynamics over the Startup Life Cycle" 
  • June 17, 2021, Riccardo Rebonato (EDHEC Business School), "Abrupt or Gradual? What Recursive Utility Functions Can Tell Us about the Optimal Pace of Climate Change Abatement" 
  • June 8, 2021, Mariassunta Giannetti (Stockholm School of Economics and CEPR), organised jointly with the CEPR
  • May 11, 2021, Vikrant Vig (London Business School), Quality and Productivity in Aircraft Sales", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • April 6, 2021, Savitar Sundaresan (Imperial College and CEPR), "More Risk, More Information: How Passive Ownership Can Improve Informational Efficiency", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • April 1, 2021, Laurent Calvet (EDHEC Business School and CEPR), "What Do the Portfolios of Individual Investors Reveal About the Cross-Section of Equity Returns?"
  • March 9, 2021, Svetlana Bryzgalova (London Business School and CEPR) "Bayesian Solutions for the Factor Zoo", organised jointly with the CEPR
  • February 9, 2021, Marieke Bos (Stockholm School of Economics), "Corporate Restructuring and Employees’ Mental Health" organised jointly with the CEPR
  • February 5, 2021, Lu Zhang (Ohio State University), "Searching for the Equity Premium"
  • January 21, 2021, Yacine Aït-Sahalia (Princeton University), "Implied Stochastic Volatility Models" 

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