Coordinator: Shantaram Hegde, shegde@business.uconn.edu

The Ph.D. Program in Finance prepares students to conduct state-of-the-art research and to take faculty positions in business schools at leading universities. The program emphasizes: (1) student/faculty interaction; (2) flexibility in designing a program to meet individual needs; and (3) timely completion of the degree.

The Department of Finance allows doctoral students to specialize their skills in corporate or business finance, financial management in government and not-for-profit organizations, financial planning, investments, banking, insurance, real estate, public accounting and health systems.

The Finance faculty have a wide range of research interests including but limited to: market microstructure, corporate governance, real options, risk management, financial intermediation, IPO’s, event studies in finance and real estate, market frictions and asset pricing, house price indices, office markets, real estate market analysis, capital structure, dividend policy, mutual funds, and healthcare finance.

If you would like further information about the Finance Department, please refer to Finance Home.

Students who have not previously acquired knowledge of the subject matter of the Common Body of Knowledge (CBK) courses of the AACSB, which include Accounting, Business Policy, Management, and marketing, are expected to acquire that knowledge as part of their program. However, these CBK courses as well as the Pre- and Co-requisite courses listed above will not count as any of the doctoral-level electives required below.

PhD Program Requirements (45 Hours):

Course (Credit Hours)

If a candidate has satisfactorily completed some of the course requirements listed under Research Methods and Supporting Courses at the time of entering the program, then the following courses may be substituted with the approval of the Finance Ph.D. Coordinator: Two Core MBA Finance Courses from FNCE 302, 304, 305, and 306 Real Estate and Insurance students would take the equivalent master’s level courses (e.g. FNCE 330) Graduate-level microeconomics, financial mathematics, mathematics and statistics courses

FNCE 400: WORKSHOP IN FINANCE, REAL ESTATE, INSURANCE, and HEALTH SYSTEMS
This workshop will carry 3 hours credit per semester. It consists of presentations by visiting scholars and in-house faculty and will be scheduled for Thursday or Friday afternoon at 3:30. In addition, selected School of Business, Accounting and/or Economics workshops/seminars may be included. The ‘Qualifying Paper” must be presented by the end of the 4th semester as part of the requirement of Fnce 400.
FNCE 401: INTRODUCTION TO FINANCE THEORY AND EVIDENCE:
Topics include: efficient market hypothesis, utility theory, portfolio theory, CAPM, arbitrage pricing theory, option pricing, capital structure/tax theory, capital budgeting under uncertainty, current empirical studies.
FNCE 402: CORPORATE AND INSTITUTIONAL FINANCE:
Topics include: information asymmetry, agency, internal capital markets, governance, market microstructure, moral hazard/adverse selection. Concepts are applied in both corporate and financial institution settings.
FNCE 403: THEORY OF FINANCIAL MARKETS AND VALUATION:
Topics include: fundamental pricing theorems, state preference theory, martingale pricing, dominance, spanning and arbitrage restrictions, consumption models, and continuous-time approaches to asset pricing, interest rate models, and derivatives pricing.
Fnce 404: EMPIRICAL METHODS IN FINANCE RESEARCH:
Topics include: Predictability of asset prices, time series models of market microstructure, event study methodology, tests of the asset pricing models and derivative pricing models, market efficiency, volatility of asset returns, and term structure of interest rates.