Faculty Testimonials

I found the students in my EDHEC course to be exceptionally motivated and talented. This is not surprising: the same traits that make one successful in industry, an eagerness to know more and the ability to absorb complicated ideas, are the same traits that lead to successful scholars.

Jeffrey M. Wooldridge , University Distinguished Professor of Economics, Michigan State University. Specialist in panel data models, for the second time, he will teach an elective course in Microeconometrics, in January 2020.

Professional PhD students bring a lot of relevant experience to the class room. Many students have a good understanding of the scope and limitations of the material taught. The interaction with these students is a very enriching experience for professors and I hope the same holds true for students.

Marcel Rindisbacher , Associate Professor Questrom School of Business, Boston University. He taught an elective course on Monte Carlo Methods in Finance.

Teaching the EDHEC PhD students has been a real pleasure because they come with a wealth of professional experience that makes them a particularly deep and perceptive cohort of students. They immediately understand why a result is important, and they can see the connection between theory, measurement and financial reality straight away. Working with them is truly a give-and-take process.

Riccardo Rebonato, Professor of Finance, EDHEC Business School, PhD in Finance Core Faculty Member, taught an elective course on Term Structure Modelling in the P & Q Measures.

I was definitely surprised by the quality of the students. I give this advanced doctoral seminar every other year at the University of Chicago. Knowing about the large proportion of executives in the class, I was worried that the material may be too difficult. It was a relief to find out that students not only were up to the challenge but also had very good questions for me, many of which were...

Pietro Veronesi, Professor of Finance, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, teaches Recent Developments in Dynamic Asset Allocation and Macro-Finance

I was amazed to see how many top scholars from around the world were teaching in it. And, I was also very impressed by the students in this programme, many of whom are very senior executives at top financial institutions and corporations.

The best thing about the students on the PhD programme is their strong motivation and also their desire to answer big questions that are...

Raman Uppal, Professor of Finance, EDHEC Business School, teaches Continuous-time Financial Economics in the PhD in Finance programme, Academic Director of the PhD in Finance programme

Motivation is palpable in the classroom – this is not a quiet crowd, participants are very good at giving feedback and challenging the instructor to identify the tools needed to address the issues they feel strongly about, whether these are issues they face in their work, dissertation work or both – it is exactly the type of interaction that you hope for as an instructor and researcher.

Allan Timmermann, Atkinson/Epstein Endowed Chair Professor of Finance at the Rady School of Management and Professor in the Economics Department, University of California, San Diego

Irrespective of their professional background, all participants are genuinely interested and ask questions: it’s also the first time that I have 100% attention and engagement on the part of a group. What is more, these students are asking the right questions – again it is extremely rare to work with a group of students in which all members make relevant contributions that enrich the class...

Ludovic Phalippou, Associate Professor of Finance at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford and Contributing Faculty, PhD in Finance programme, EDHEC-Risk Institute, taught an elective on private equity

The Dissertation Proposal aims to identify a research topic that will be the foundation of the student thesis. After a first year focused on learning fundamentals through lectures, doing assignments and taking exams, the student has to change mindset and think about an original research topic where he would like to contribute to the advancement of knowledge.

Abraham Lioui, Professor of Finance, teaches Discrete-time Financial Economics, Core Course, and Director of the PhD programme

The students that I taught are unique in a number of ways. Some are already seasoned investment professionals and others have even had multiple successful careers. Their maturity and experience differ markedly from those of the typical PhD student who is fresh out of college or for that matter even of a typical MBA student who has had only a few years of work experience. Perhaps as a result,...

Harrison Hong, John Scully ‘66 Professor of Economics and Finance at Columbia University, Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research

As I mentioned earlier, one objective of the programme was that students publish in peer-reviewed journals. As of today, our graduates have produced 14 publications. Two are in the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, which is one of the Financial Times top four journals used in business school research rankings. The others are more specialised journals such as the Journal of Fixed...

René Garcia, Professor of Finance at EDHEC Business School and Director, EDHEC PhD in Finance, teaches Empirical Methods in Finance core course

At EDHEC, the research requirement for the awarding of the degree involves either the candidate writing two stand-alone research papers or one lengthy product that contains two related research issues. All of the completed dissertations I supervised to date have been two research papers. The majority of the PhD candidates who have completed two research papers have had both papers published or...

Frank Fabozzi, Professor of Finance, EDHEC Business School and EDHEC PhD in Finance Core Faculty member

It is tremendously important for students and all researchers to continuously think about the difference between what is important and what is merely unsolved. The sweet spot is to address unsolved problems that are simultaneously truly important. To make a powerful contribution, you need to anchor in the market and bring tools to bear on important issues. The programme’s students have the...

Frank Diebold, Paul F. Miller, Jr. and E. Warren Shafer Miller Professor of Social Sciences; Professor of Economics (SAS); Professor of Finance and Statistics (Wharton); Co-Director, Wharton Financial Institutions Center, University of Pennsylvania

It was an interesting group to teach because they knew a lot of things that the usual PhD student does not know. I admit I had failed to realise this before coming to class. If unexpected, it was a pleasant surprise to have more senior and experienced students who know the products really well. In many ways it is easier to teach such people because they are highly motivated and have context....

Sanjiv Das, William and Janice Terry Professor of Finance, Leavey School of Business, teaches Credit Risk Modelling, elective seminar

Doctoral training provides you with knowledge and a set of tools which can be used in the industry. For example, we all read about the complex derivative products at the heart of the current financial crisis—it is useful for professionals in the finance industry to understand what models were used to price and manage these products and what went wrong

Jakša Cvitanic, Professor of Mathematical Finance, Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, taught Continuous-time Finance, Core Course

Usually, the doctoral students I teach are straight out of university; here we are talking about mature individuals with work experience who decided to do a PhD because they were curious about things they have been observing in their work. Such students have strong motivation, a clear idea of what they are here for; most have experience of the financial markets or other areas of finance. This...

Rama Cont, Director of the Centre for Financial Engineering at Columbia University, research scientist in mathematics at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), founding partner of Finance Concepts, a risk management advisory firm

I love the combination that the students have: they are very technically skilled on average and also have all a wealth of practical experience. The biggest challenge for the traditional PhD student is to come up with ideas, whereas the EDHEC PhD students typically have lots of ideas from their work and their challenge is finding time to execute them. So it is fun to be around students who have...

Peter Christoffersen, Professor of Finance, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, taught elective seminars on "Financial Risk Management" and "Risk Management and Extreme Risks"

Teaching an elective course like this is an enticing opportunity to talk about your research and focus on things that you really care about. This is quite unusual, even at the doctoral level. I have been researching this area for over ten years and this provides a great opportunity to organise my thoughts on the topic and present them in a unified way.

Mikhail Chernov, Professor of Finance, UCLA Anderson School of Management, Research Fellow, CEPR, teaches Empirical Option Pricing, elective seminar

At Duke, I teach in both executive education and doctoral programmes. Here the students are a nice mix of the two as they had both a great academic interest in finance and real experience from the field – this was perfect for me since I strive to do academic research that is in sync with the industry

Tim Bollerslev, Juanita and Clifton Kreps Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics and Professor of Finance at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, teaches Volatility Modelling, elective seminar

You know, the most difficult aspect of the dissertation exercise is to come up with a suitable topic. What makes it hard is that it should be both interesting and doable in some finite time, i.e. one or two years --- this is difficult for most students. Of course you can get great ideas reading articles, that can happen, but I think something that really helps the process is to go to seminars...

Ravi Bansal, J.B., Fuqua Professor of Finance, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University, Research Associate, NBER, teaches Long-Run Risks in Asset Prices, elective seminar

I was much impressed with what EDHEC-Risk Institute had been able to accomplish in less than ten years’ time. The concept of a doctoral program opened to executives was novel and very interesting and I wanted to find out what type of profiles students would have. I thus accepted Professor Garcia’s invitation and am glad I had this opportunity to teach in the program

Yacine Aït-Sahalia, , Otto Hack 1903 Professor of Finance and Economics, Director of the Bendheim Center for Finance, Princeton University, teaches Financial Econometrics of Jumps, elective seminar

The second difference has to do with the very nature of the student population. It has been an absolute pleasure teaching students with a broad range of professional experiences and achievements.

Federico Bandi, PhD, Professor of Economics and Finance, Johns Hopkins University and EDHEC PhD in Finance Affiliate Faculty member

Faculty Testimonials

PhD in Finance

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