Finance
Awards & Honors
Recent Awards
Belén Villalonga won the 2010 Best Paper Award from the European Institute for Advanced Management Studies Workshop on Family Firms and the 2010 Best Paper Award from the Finance and Corporate Governance Conference for her paper with Raphael Amit, Yuan Ding, and Hua Zhang, "The Role of Institutional Development in the Prevalence and Value of Family Firms" (HBS Working Paper 10-103).
Lauren H. Cohen and Christopher Malloy were selected for a 2010 Smith Breeden Distinguished Paper Honor for the Best Paper in the Journal of Finance for their paper with Andrea Frazzini, "Sell-Side School Ties" (August 2010).
Lauren H. Cohen and Christopher Malloy won the 2010 First Prize Chicago Quantitative Alliance Academic Paper Competition for their paper with Lukasz Pomorski, "Decoding Inside Information." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 16454, October 2010.
Lauren H. Cohen won the 2010 First Prize in the ISE 25th Anniversary Best Paper Competition for his paper with Dong Lou, "Complicated Firms." The ISE (Istanbul Stock Exchange) in collaboration with Boğaziçi University awarded best paper prizes to three outstanding research papers as ISE celebrated the 25th anniversary of its establishment. The paper also received the 2010 Best Paper Prize from the Center for Research in Security Prices and a 2010 Institute for Quantitative Investment Research Grant.
Josh Lerner won the 2010 Axiom Business Book Award Gold Medal for the best book on entrepreneurship for Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed and What to Do About It (Princeton University Press, 2009).
In 2010, Nicolas P. Retsinas was named by Business Week and Bloomberg as of the 50 most powerful people in real estate.
Josh Lerner has been named the 2010 winner of the prestigious Global Award for Entrepreneurship for his "pioneering research into venture capital and venture capital-backed entrepreneurship. Among his most important contributions is the synthesis of the fields of finance and entrepreneurship. He has also made several important contributions in the area of entrepreneurial innovation, spanning issues relating to alliances, patents, and open-source project development." The annual award was established in 1996 by the Swedish Entrepreneurship Forum, the Swedish Agency for Economic and Regional Growth, and Sweden's Research Institute of Industrial Economics.
Robert C. Merton was honored with the 2010 Kolmogorov Medal and Lecture. The lecture is given annually by distinguished researchers in the field of theoretical computer science, or related mathematical sciences, who made outstanding contributions to developing research directions initiated by Andrei N. Kolmogorov.
Robert C. Merton received the 2010 LECG Award for Outstanding Contributions to Financial Economics for his tremendous scholarship and contributions to the field of financial economics.
In 2009, Nicolas P. Retsinas was named by Builder Magazine as one of the top 30 innovators in the house building industry in the past 30 years.
Robert C. Merton received the 2009 Tjalling C. Koopmans Asset Award from the Tilburg School of Economics and Management. The award is "given to scientists who have made extraordinary contributions to the economic sciences and policy making, and have reached the highest standards of quality in academic research."
Mihir A. Desai and C. Fritz Foley were runners-up for the 2009 Review of Financial Studies-Michael Brennan Best Paper Award for the paper (with Kristin J. Forbes) "Financial Constraints and Growth: Multinational and Local Firm Responses to Currency Depreciations" in Review of Financial Studies (2008).
Josh Lerner won the 2009 PROSE Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence in the Business, Finance, & Management category for Boulevard of Broken Dreams: Why Public Efforts to Boost Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Have Failed and What to Do About It (Princeton University Press, 2009). This award is given by the Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers.
Josh Lerner received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Technical University of Munich in 2009.
Paul A. Gompers, Josh Lerner, and David S. Scharfstein won the Second Place 2008 Fama-DFA (Dimensional Fund Advisors) Prize for the Best Paper Published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the Areas of Capital Markets and Asset Pricing for the paper (with Anna Kovner) "Venture capital investment cycles: the impact of public markets" (Volume 87, Issue 1, January 2008).
Mihir A. Desai and C. Fritz Foley won the 2008 Pearson/Prentice Hall Prize for Best Paper in Financial Management for the paper (with James R. Hines Jr.) "Dividend Policy inside the Multinational Firm" (2007).
Robert C. Merton was inducted into the "Fixed Income Analyst Society Hall of Fame" in 2008.
Robert C. Merton has been selected as the recipient of the 2008 Robert A. Muh Award in the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences at MIT. The Muh Award honors MIT alumni who have made outstanding contributions in one or more of these fields.
Robert C. Merton was awarded the honorary degree, Doctor of Science Honoris Causa, by Claremont Graduate University, Claremont California at a ceremony on May 17, 2008.
Nicolas P. Retsinas was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Public Service from Rhode Island College in 2008.
Nicolas P. Retsinas was inducted into the "Affordable Housing Hall of Fame" in 2008 by Affordable Housing Finance to recognize his outstanding achievement in the housing industry.
Lauren H. Cohen won the 2008 Smith Breeden Prize for a distinguished paper in the Journal of Finance for the paper (with Andrea Frazzini) "Economic Links and Predictable Returns" (2008). The paper also received the 2008 Emerald Management Reviews' Citation of Excellence.
Kenneth A. Froot was awarded the 2008 Witt Award of the American Risk and Insurance Association for his article, "Risk Management, Capital Budgeting, and Capital Structure Policy for Insurers and Reinsurers" (Journal of Risk and Insurance 74, no. 2, June 2007).
Carliss Y. Baldwin received the 2008 Distinguished Speaker Award from the Technology Management Section of INFORMS.
Robert C. Merton received the 2008 Distinguished Finance Educator Award from the Financial Education Association.
Mihir A. Desai was the Second Place Winner of the 2007 Jensen Prize for Best Paper Published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the areas of Corporate Finance and Organization for his paper with Alexander Dyck and Luigi Zingales, "Theft and Taxes," Journal of Financial Economics, 84, no. 3 (June 2007).
André F. Perold was awarded the 2007 Graham and Dodd Award for Best Perspectives Article from the Financial Analysts Journal and the CFA Institute for the paper "Fundamentally Flawed Indexing." The Best Perspectives Award recognizes the timeliest and most thought-provoking opinion article in the Financial Analysts Journal for this year.
Lauren H. Cohen and Christopher J. Malloy have won the 2007 Smith Breeden Prize for a distinguished paper in the Journal of Finance for their paper entitled, "Supply and Demand Shifts in the Shorting Market" (with Karl Diether).
Lauren H. Cohen, Christopher J. Malloy, and Andrea Frazzini have won 2007 Barclays Global Investors Prize from the European Finance Association for Best Paper on Asset Pricing for their paper entitled, "The Small World of Investing: Board Connections and Mutual Fund Returns."
Lauren H. Cohen and Breno Schmidt won the 2007 Society of Quantitative Analysts Award from the Western Finance Association for Best Paper in Quantitative Investments and the 2006 Barclays Global Investors Prize from the European Finance Association for Best Paper on Asset Allocation for their paper entitled, "Attracting Flows by Attracting Big Clients: Conflicts of Interest and Mutual Fund Portfolio Choice."
Robert C. Merton was profiled as one of the 40 People of Power & Influence in Finance during the Last 40 Years, by Institutional Investor magazine in its special May 2007 issue celebrating the magazine's 40th anniversary. The story was entitled "Theory and Practice."
Robert C. Merton was profiled as a pioneer in establishing modern risk management by Risk magazine in its special July 2007 issue celebrating the magazine's 20th anniversary. The story was entitled "A Model Prophet."
Belén Villalonga and Raphael Amit won the 2007 Standard Life Investments Finance Prize for the best paper in the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) Finance Working Paper series, and the 2006 Family Firms Institute Best Unpublished Research Award, for the paper "How Are U.S. Family Firms Controlled?" (previously titled "Benefits and costs of control-enhancing mechanisms in U.S. family firms")