Department of Finance
The Department of Finance welcomes applications from excellent candidates with a background in quantitative subjects including mathematics, statistics, economics and finance. As a doctoral student in the Department of Finance, you will work closely with faculty members and are encouraged to think creatively. The programme offers specialist courses to build your knowledge of theory and technical skills and equip you with the tools to carry out high quality theoretical and empirical research.
Research areas
Faculty and doctoral students are engaged in a wide range of research areas including:
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Asset pricing
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Corporate finance
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Financial analysis
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Investments
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Risk management
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Household finance
Recent research covers derivative pricing and hedging, quantitative risk management and asset allocation, financial econometrics, stochastic volatility modelling, credit risk modelling, catastrophe risk analysis, M&A and private equity. Working in the Department of Finance will provide you with the opportunity to take part in cutting edge research in a collaborative environment with internal and external partnerships.
Research centres and partnerships
The Department of Finance houses research centres that undertake advanced study in specialist areas and include the Centre for Hedge Fund Research, and the Risk Management Laboratory, where Imperial faculty collaborate with external academics and industry professionals to develop cutting edge research, influencing global industry practice and public policy. The Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis, which enhances expertise in financial economics, is headed by world renowned academic, Professor Franklin Allen. The School also hosts the Centre for Global Finance and Technology, working towards a greater understanding of the impact of technology on finance, business and society.
The Department also works collaboratively with faculty in other departments at Imperial College London such as Mathematics, Computing and Medicine, on research including the Grantham Institute for Climate Change and the London Graduate School in Mathematical Finance, which enables our doctoral students to take maths and finance courses at LSE and UCL.
Additionally, doctoral students can enjoy the faculty’s links with other institutions including UK and European universities such as Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance at the University of Oxford, SDA Bocconi, Toulouse School of Economics and Oulu University; North American institutions such as Harvard, the Booth School of Business at University of Chicago and the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia; and international institutions such as the IMF, the Federal Reserve Banks at Atlanta and Chicago; and leading central banks including the Bank of England and European Central Bank.
Doctoral thesis in the Department of Finance
| Name | Thesis title | Supervisor(s) |
|---|---|---|
| Daniela Alifano | Central bank interventions and foreign exchange market microstructure | Professor Walter Distaso, Professor Rustam Ibragimov |
| Davide Benedetti | Essays in corporate risk management and insurance | Dr Enrico Biffis, Dr Mario Ghossoub |
| Hsuan Fu | The international spillovers of monetary policy to asset price | Dr Pasquale Della Corte, Dr Marcin Kacperczyk |
| Mobeen Iqbal | Covered interest parity deviation in the cross-currency basis swap market | Dr Robert Kosowski, Professor David Miles |
| Valentina Raponi | Estimating risk premia using large cross-sections | Professor Paolo Zaffaroni |
| Jingyu Zhang | Institutional ownership and endogenous Information Acquisition | Dr Marcin Kacperczyk, Professor Alex Michaelides |
| Jialu Shen | Higher moments and optimal portfolio choice over the life cycle | Professor Alex Michaelides, Professor Rustam Ibragimov |
| Robert Czech | Benchmarking pressures: a channel for mutual fund contagion? | Dr Marcin Kacperczyk, Dr Petri Jylha |
| Adelina Barbalau | An Ambiguity Channel of Real Investment Contagion | Professor Franklin Allen |
Practical experience
The Finance Department also offers students the opportunity to engage in teaching activities on the suite of Finance Master’s programmes.