PhD in Finance

Department of Finance
Departmental website: http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/finance
MPhil/PhD in Finance
Application code: N4ZC
Start date: 1 October 2009
Duration: MPhil/PhD 3/4 years (minimum 2)
Entry requirement: Taught master's degree in relevant area
English requirement: Standard
GRE/GMAT requirement: None
Fee level: See Tuition fees
Financial support: LSE scholarships and studentships (see Fees and Financial support). UK/EU students may apply for ESRC funding (see Economic and Social Research Council). Departmental doctoral scholarships may also be available to applicants from the UK/EU and overseas
Application deadline: None
Taught programmes
MSc Finance (Full-time programme)
MSc Finance (Part-time evening programme)
MSc Finance and Economics
MSc Finance and Economics (Research)
MSc Management and Regulation of Risk
MSc Accounting and Finance (Joint degree with Department of Accounting)
Diploma in Accounting and Finance (Joint degree with Department of Accounting)
About the Department
The Department of Finance is devoted to excellence in teaching and research in the full range of the subfields of finance including corporate finance, asset pricing theory, risk management, empirical analysis of capital markets, behavioural finance, portfolio analysis, derivatives pricing, microstructure and financial econometrics. It has grown in recent years to become one of the largest and most highly regarded finance groups in the UK and Europe. It is closely associated with LSE's Financial Markets Group which regularly hosts a wide variety of seminars, conferences and public addresses by leading academics and practitioners. With over 150 postgraduate students selected from a pool of top applicants worldwide, a faculty recruited from the best departments internationally, and a steady flow of distinguished visitors, we have a stimulating environment for research and learning that is on a par with the best worldwide.
LSE's reputation with employers opens up a broad range of career opportunities. The critical and analytical skills you will develop are attractive to investment banks, commercial banks, fund managers and the financial services sector generally as well as in management consulting. A number of graduates continue with further postgraduate work or take up top academic appointments.
Staff and their academic interests
Professor Ronald Anderson: Dynamic corporate finance; contingent claims analysis, risk management; financial market structure and regulation; structuring financial contracts and institutions.
Dr Elisabetta Bertero: Budget constraints and state-owned firms; French and Italian financial systems; interdependence of equity markets; international finance; sub-sovereign debt.
Professor Sudipto Bhattacharya: Corporate finance and governance; models of research and development and the dissemination of proprietary knowledge; financial intermediation; contract theory; regulation.
Professor Gregory Connor: Security market pricing; portfolio risk management; factor models of asset returns; multivariate stochastic volatility.
Dr Vicente Cunat: Corporate finance; applied theory; applied econometrics; industrial organisation; labour and personnel economics.
Dr Jon Danielsson: Financial risk analysis; value at risk; volatility modelling and forecasting; extreme value theory; financial engineering; regulation; financial crises.
Dr Amil Dasgupta: Information economics and game theory with applications to finance; the theory of financial crises; delegated portfolio management.
Professor Antoine Faure-Grimaud: Venture capital; capital structure and product market competition; corporate governance.
Dr Jack Favilukis: Consumption based asset pricing; incomplete markets; heterogeneity and inequality; limited participation and participation costs.
Professor Denis Gromb: Corporate finance; limited arbitrage; economics of organisations.
Dr Stephane Guibaud: International macro and finance; asset pricing; yield curve, recursive contracts; optimal debt management.
Dr Antonio Mele: Stock market volatility and the business cycle; the term structure of interest rates; information networks in financial markets; simulation based nonparametric methods and statistical inference for dynamic models in finance.
Dr Yves Nosbusch: Empirical asset pricing; credit risk; debt management; intergenerational risk sharing. Dr Andrew Patton: Financial econometrics; forecasting; volatility and dependence modelling; copulas; hedge funds.
Professor Christopher Polk: Asset pricing; corporate finance; hedge funds; macroeconomics.
Dr Rohit Rahi: Arbitrage in segmented markets; financial innovation and security design; asset pricing with asymmetric information; general equilibrium theory; incomplete markets.
Professor Dimitri Vayanos: Liquidity and asset pricing, information in asset markets, delegated portfolio management, behavioural finance.
Dr Michela Verardo: Empirical asset pricing; market efficiency and investment anomalies; trading behaviour of institutional investors; behavioural finance.
Professor David Webb: Financial economics; monetary theory, specifically analysis of bankruptcy and financial contracts.
Dr Jean-Pierre Zigrand: General equilibrium asset pricing; financial intermediation and delegation; continuous time asset pricing; herding, market crashes; foundations of arbitrage.
Opportunities for research
You should have a substantial academic background in finance or economics, typically at master's level. Satisfactory performance in the department's own MSc programmes may meet the entrance requirements.
The Department has a formally structured PhD Finance programme which has received research training recognition from the ESRC. The programme aims to produce students whose research is of the highest international quality, and is designed to provide a broad based training in theoretical and empirical research methods in finance.
The PhD in Finance programme has two routes – Route 1 is for students coming from relevant master's degree programmes (such as the MSc Accounting and Finance or MSc Management and Regulation of Risk programmes at LSE, or equivalent elsewhere) and Route 2 is for those students who have already completed the Department's MSc Finance and Economics or MSc Finance and Economics (Research) programmes or equivalent elsewhere. During their first year, Route 1 students will take courses in Theories of Finance, Advanced Microeconomics, Financial Econometrics and Forecasting Financial Time Series to build their core knowledge in these areas. In their second year, Route 1 students will take a course in Empirical Finance together with an optional course. Route 2 students will take Theories of Finance, Empirical Finance and an optional course. Route 1 and Route 2 students attend a PhD seminar in Finance throughout their PhD studies.
To progress at the end of each year, students in both programmes must pass their examined courses at grades specified by the Department and make satisfactory progress in their research. Progress is regularly monitored by the Department's Postgraduate Assessment Review Panel.
We encourage our research students to participate fully in the intellectual life of the Department, and in the research seminar and workshop programmes of the Department and related research centres such as the Financial Markets Group (FMG). The weekly Capital Markets Workshops provide exposure to the work of leading academics from the UK and overseas. In addition, the FMG hosts a number of conferences each year with leading researchers and practitioners.