Finance Down Under 2011: Building on the Best from the Cellars of Finance

10-12 March, 2011
The University of Melbourne
Department of Finance

 

Keynote Speakers:

Peter Bossaerts (CalTech)
Jeremy Duffield (Vanguard)
Jeffrey Pontiff (Boston College)
Stephen Ross (MIT)

 

The Department of Finance in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne is pleased to announce the opening of registration for its annual Finance Down Under conference.

We have expanded the conference to embrace a new theme:

Finance Down Under: Building on the Best from the Cellars of Finance.

Each year, the Saturday special session will build around a vintage work that has inspired advances and withstood the test of time. The Friday sessions are open to papers from all areas in Finance.

For this year, we have chosen to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the 1961 vintage Miller-Modigliani "Dividend Policy, Growth, and the Valuation of Shares." Based on the recommendations of the 49 members Program Committee, we have chosen the 15 most highly rated papers from the many submissions. Along with the invited discussants, academics from 20 universities in Europe, the U.S., Asia and Australia will present at the conference.

We will also award two Best Paper Awards, namely, the CEG Research Prize in Corporate Finance (AU$2000) and the JCP Investment Partners Research Prize in Investments (AU$5000). The prizes will be presented at the Saturday March 12 evening conference dinner to be held in the Yarra Valley after an afternoon of touring its great wineries. The welcome reception on the evening of Thursday March 10 and the end-of-day canaps on Friday March 11 both feature the great wines of the region. To ensure the highest quality interaction, overall attendance to the conference is limited to 60. Your Organizing Committee Bruce D. Grundy, Spencer Martin and Stefan Petry

Previous conferences (including NYU Down Under 2007, Derivatives Down Under 2008, Finance Down Under 2009, and Finance Down Under 2010) attracted prominent presenters and discussants from the USA, Europe and Asia. Program details of those conferences can still be found on our web site:
http://www.finance.unimelb.edu.au/Research/Past-conferences.html

 

Please click on the following to find out more:

Organizers 

Professor Bruce Grundy
Professor Spencer Martin
Dr Stefan Petry

 

Keynote and Invited Speakers

INVITED SPEAKERS

Peter Bossaerts - William D. Hacker Professor of Economics and Management and Professor of Finance at the California Institute of Technology. Professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fdrale de Lausanne

While Peters research and publications have encompassed many areas of theoretical and empirical finance, his present work focuses on experimental finance. Experimental finance borrows tools from many relevant fields, such as decision theory, general equilibrium theory, game theory, cognitive psychology, and decision neuroscience. Peters work has been published in top journals in finance, economics, econometrics, science and neuroscience. Peter Bossaerts has taught undergraduate, MBA, PhD and executive classes at universities across the world. He is or has been on the board of many academic journals, including the Review of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and Mathematical Finance. http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~pbs/

 

Jeremy Duffield Former Managing Director International Planning and Development Vanguard Group. Founder and Former Managing Director Vanguard Investments Australia

Mr. Duffield joined Vanguard in 1980 from the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, Virginia, where he worked in economic research. He started as assistant to Vanguard President and founder John C. Bogle and was subsequently named Senior Vice President of Planning and Development. Following 16 years working for Vanguard in the US, Mr. Duffield returned to Australia in 1996 to establish Vanguard Investments Australia. He oversaw the growth of Vanguards business in Australia from a one-man startup to a funds management business employing more than 200 people and managing more than $A80 billion on behalf of Vanguards institutional, adviser and individual clients. He retired from Vanguard at the end of 2010. Mr. Duffield is currently a director of Plum Financial Services, Ltd and a member of the Australia Financial Centre Task Force. He previously served as deputy chairman of the Investment and Financial Services Association (IFSA), on the Federal Government's Financial Sector Advisory Council (FSAC), and on the Advisory Board of the Financial Literacy Foundation. http://www.plum.com.au/about/introducing/administration.asp

 

Jeff Pontiff - Boston College

Professor Pontiff has teaching and research interests in the area of corporate finance and capital markets. His research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Financial Studies, and the Rand Journal. He has held research or teaching positions at the University of Washington, UCLA, Emory, Harvard Business School, ESCP-Europe, and the Institute for Financial Research (Stockholm). He is currently an associate editor of Management Science, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Journal of Wine Economics, and is a past associate editor at the Review of Financial Studies. He is the president and co-founder of the Financial Research Association, and a past director for the Western Finance Association. http://www.bc.edu/schools/csom/faculty/bios/pontiff.html

 

Steve Ross - Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Professor Ross is the author of more than 100 articles in economics and finance and is the coauthor of an introductory textbook in finance. He received his B.S. with honors from CalTech in 1965 where he majored in physics, and his Ph.D. in economics from Harvard in 1970. While he has worked on a variety of topics in economics and finance, he is probably best known for having invented the Arbitrage Pricing Theory and the Theory of Agency, and as the co- discoverer of risk neutral pricing and of the binomial model for pricing derivatives. Models developed by him and coworkers, including term structure models and option pricing models, are now standards for pricing in major securities trading firms. He has been the recipient of numerous prizes and awards including the Graham and Dodd Award for financial writing, the Pomerance Prize for excellence in the area of options research, the University of Chicago's Leo Melamed Prize for the best research by a business school professor and the 1996 IAFE Financial Engineer of the Year Award. In 2006 he was the first recipient of the CME-MSRI Prize in Innovative Quantitative Application and in 2007 he won the Jean-Jacques Laffont Prize given by the Toulouse School of Economics. A Fellow of the Econometric Society and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he currently serves as an Associate Editor of several economics and finance journals and in 1988 was President of the American Finance Association. http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=SP000115&co_list=F


Programme committee

 

Logistics

About Melbourne

There is much to love about Melbourne. This sophisticated cosmopolitan city in the south-east corner of mainland Australia inspires a deep passion in those lucky enough to live here. Melburnians love the city's vibrant energy, staggering choice of restaurants, funky boutiques, caf-filled laneways, cool bars, unbeatable galleries, luscious parks and village-like inner suburbs, each with its own special character.

Melbourne is the capital of Victoria and is a relatively modern city which is less than 200 years old and never sits still. New futuristic designs add to the fascinating mix of architecture and ensure the skyline is constantly changing. Melbourne is very much about lifestyle. It is no huge surprise to residents that their city has been ranked as one of the worlds most liveable cities
For more information, please click here for Visit Melbourne website: http://www.visitmelbourne.com/
And for a map of the Central Business District (which is walking distance from the conference venue): http://www.melbourne.vic.gov.au/rsrc/Maps/CityMap.pdf

Climate

March weather in Melbourne is typically quite mild with spells of fine sunny weather and temperatures around 20C. The nights are quite cool with temperatures dropping to 14C. However, weather in Melbourne can also be notoriously fickle and often provides four seasons in one day.

Travel Guide

Click here for the travellers guide to help you plan your trip to Melbourne: http://www.immi.gov.au/visitors/index.htm and http://www.australianexplorer.com/visa_information.htm
These sites contain useful information that you should know before arriving in Melbourne, including visa requirements.

Accommodation

A limited number of one bedroom suites at a reduced conference rate have been reserved at the Quay West Suites and will be allocated on a first come first serve basis. If you decide to stay at the Quay West, please contact the Conference Secretary, AnnMaree Murray (mua@unimelb.edu.au) and ask for the booking code. Set amongst the picturesque Southbank promenade overlooking the Yarra River, the Quay West is a leisurely stroll from Melbournes CBD and a short tram or taxi ride from The University of Melbourne.

Other accommodation options in Melbourne include the Stamford Plaza Hotel and the Langham Hotel.

Conference Venue
Melbourne Business School at The University of Melbourne campus, Parkville. - Map

Full maps of the University's Parkville campus are available here. These are in PDF format and require Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.

GETTING THERE

Train

Train travellers alight at Melbourne Central station, exiting via the Swanston Street exit. Any tram on Swanston Street heading North-West named "University of Melbourne" will take you near the Melbourne Business School.

Bus

Two bus services take you to the doorstep of the University of Melbourne. The bus stop for both services is outside the Arts Centre of the University of Melbourne on Swanston Street:

Tram

The following tram routes can be used to get to the University of Melbourne:

Swanston Street

Elizabeth Street/Royal Parade

Contact Us

Finance Down Under 2011 Conference Secretariat
Conference Secretary: Ms AnnMaree Murray
Email: mua@unimelb.edu.au
Telephone: +61 3 8344 3538
Fax: +61 3 8344 6914