2020 Meetings
FiRe research seminar (Dezember 7, 16.00-17.30, online)
The coordinates for the seminar were:
Lecturer: Bill Megginson (University of Oklahoma)
Title: Dissecting the Listing Gap: Mergers, Private Equity, or Regulation?
Time: December 7, 2020, 16.00-17.30
Paper: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3329555
About the lecturer
Bill Megginson is Professor and Price Chair in Finance at the University of Oklahoma’s Michael F. Price College of Business. He is also the Saudi Aramco Chair Professor in Finance at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. From 2002 to 2007, he was a voting member of the Italian Ministry of Economics and Finance’s Global Advisory Committee on Privatization. During spring 2008, he was the Fulbright Tocqueville Distinguished Chair in American Studies and Visiting Professor at the Université-Paris Dauphine. He received the University of Oklahoma’s top research prize, a George Lynn Cross Research Professorship, in April 2010.
Professor Megginson's research interest has focused in recent years on the privatization of state-owned enterprises, sovereign wealth fund investments, energy finance, and investment banking principles and practices. He has published refereed articles in several top academic journals, including the Journal of Economic Literature, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Foreign Policy. His co-authored study documenting significant performance improvements in recently privatized companies received one of two Smith Breeden Distinguished Paper Awards for outstanding research published in the Journal of Finance during 1994. He is author or co-author of nine textbooks.
Professor Megginson’s research has been frequently cited in academic and professional publications. His articles have been downloaded over 48,000 times from the Social Sciences Research Network, and his books and articles have been cited over 12,000 times (according to Google Scholar). His co-authored privatization survey article, published in the Journal of Economic Literature in 2001, is the eighth most widely cited finance article published since 2000, and the most widely cited article published in 2001. He is associate editor for two academic journals, and has served as a privatization consultant for the New York Stock Exchange, the OECD, the IMF, the World Federation of Exchanges, and the World Bank. He has visited 76 countries during his lifetime, and has lived in Spain, Pakistan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, and Saudi Arabia, in addition to the United States.
Dr. Megginson has a B.S. degree in chemistry from Mississippi College, an MBA from Louisiana State University, and a Ph.D. in finance from Florida State University. Prior to entering academia in 1986, he worked for five years as a petroleum chemist at the world's largest styrene monomer plant and at the largest independent petroleum refinery in the United States. He has been a Visiting Professor at Duke University, Vanderbilt University, the University of Zurich, the University of Amsterdam, Bocconi University, and Université-Paris Dauphine.
Austrian Working Group on Banking and Finance workshop (November 26-27)
The 35th workshop of the Austrian Working Group on Banking and Finance was held, online, in the afternoon of November 26 and all day on November 27.
FiRe research seminar (November 16, 16.00-17.30, online)
The coordinates for the seminar were:
Lecturer: Florian Ederer (Yale School of Management)
Title: Common Ownership, Competition, and Top Management Incentives
Time: November 16, 2020, 16.00-17.30
Paper: https://florianederer.github.io/common_ownership.pdf
About the lecturer
Florian Ederer is Associate Professor of Economics at the Yale School of Management and a Research Staff Member at the Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics.
His research, which has been widely published in leading journals, is in the areas of organizational economics, innovation, and behavioral economics. It focuses on the incentive design in organizations, how it shapes innovation and how it is in turn affected by social interactions and more realistic assumptions about the motives of principals and agents. Some of his recent work explores the impact of common ownership on managerial compensation and the existence and pervasiveness of “killer acquisitions” that prevent startups from challenging dominant market incumbents. In his academic work he draws on a broad set of tools often combining theoretical models, experimental methods, and empirical analysis.
Prior to joining the Yale School of Management, Florian was a faculty member of the UCLA Anderson School of Management. He earned his doctorate in economics at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology and his master’s and undergraduate degrees from the University of Oxford.
FiRe lecture (June 4) [Cancelled]
We regret that we had to push this event to next year due to the global pandemic of COVID-19.
About the lecturer
Josef Zechner is Professor of Finance and Investments at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). He is Full Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR). Before joining WU, he was Professor of Finance at the University of Vienna and at the University of British Columbia, Canada. His research covers a broad range of topics in the areas of corporate finance, banking and asset management.
Josef Zechner has published in leading finance and economics journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Political Economy and the Review of Financial Studies. He was the Managing Editor of the Review of Finance from 2003 to 2012. He is also past president of the European Finance Association (EFA), the German Finance Association (DGF) and the Western Finance Association (WFA) and is currently vice president of the Society for Financial Studies (SFS). He is also a member of the Advisory Scientific Committee (ASC) of the European Systemic Risk Board (ESRB) of the European Central Bank (ECB) and fellow of the Finance Theory Group.
Prof. Zechner has consulted and served on the supervisory boards of various financial institutions, including serving as vice president of the supervisory board of Grazer Wechselseitige Versicherung AG. He also has a strong personal connection to the University of Graz, since he started his career here. Prof. Zechner obtained his master degree, his doctoral degree and his habilitation in Graz.
Research day (June 4)
