The Finance group is made of scholars interested in theoretical and empirical financial economics, with an emphasis on banking, corporate finance, and asset pricing:

Elena Beccalli;

Ettore Croci;

Alessandro Sbuelz;

Andrea Signori;

Andrea Tarelli.

Their work includes papers published in several academic journals (among them, Financial Management, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Business Finance &Accounting, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Empirical Finance, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Management Science, Quantitative Finance, European Financial Management, and European Journal of Operational Research).
 

Research Topics
 

• Management of Financial Institutions (Elena Beccalli)
Economies of scale and scope in banking; leverage procyclicality; mergers & acquisitions; lending policies.

• Accounting and Financial Institutions (Elena Beccalli)
Interfaces between accounting principles and bank management; earnings management and conservatism; analysts forecasts.

• Corporate Governance & Shareholder Activism (Ettore Croci; Andrea Signori)
Corporate raiders; hedge fund activism; shareholder activism; board of directors;;  dual-class-share companies and loyalty shares; protection of minority investors; executive compensation; CEO career horizons.

• Family firms (Ettore Croci; Andrea Signori)
Acquisition decisions; financing decisions; financial crisis; CEO pay packages in Continental Europe.

• Mergers and Acquisitions (M&As) (Ettore Croci; Andrea Signori)
Role of family control; overconfidence and market valuation; asymmetric information and target firm returns; the role of CEO risk-taking incentives; going-private transactions; political contributions; focal acquisitions and divestitures; institutional investors’ coordination.

• Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) (Ettore Croci; Andrea Signori)
Role of family control; Role of financial intermediaries in IPO valuation; IPO activity over time; Interaction between the IPO and M&A markets; Regulation and the going public decision.

• Working capital management (Ettore Croci; Andrea Signori)
Working capital management and firm value; efficient deployment of corporate assets and executive compensation.

• Credit Risk (Alessandro Sbuelz; Andrea Tarelli)
Equity-based credit risk models; corporate bond pricing; interest-rate risk in structural models of endogenous corporate default; banks’optimal liabilities issuance in the joint presence of resolution regimes and capital requirements.

• Pricing Kernels (Alessandro Sbuelz; Andrea Tarelli)
Persistence and stock price non-linearities; cross-section of expected returns; ambiguity aversion and asset prices; term structure of interest rates.

• Dynamic Portfolio Choice (Alessandro Sbuelz; Andrea Tarelli)
Intertemporal portfolio selection with defaultable assets; dynamic portfolio choice with assets sensitive to interest-rate/inflation risks; dynamic asset allocation in the presence of risk factors and perceived pricing anomalies.

• Derivatives (Alessandro Sbuelz; Andrea Tarelli)
Non-standard optimal exercise policies for American options. American options embedded in other contracts.

• Commodities Futures Pricing (Alessandro Sbuelz; Andrea Tarelli)
Risk premia and the term structure of commodities futures prices.

Presentation of the Research Group