Prof Daniel Paravisini

Prof Vicente Cunat

This course is compulsory on the MRes/PhD in Accounting (EoA) (Economics of Accounting Track) and MRes/PhD in Finance. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit. This course uses controlled access as part of the course selection process. For information on controlled access courses, including eligibility, application processes, deadlines, and departmental contact details, please refer to the Controlled Access Courses webpage.

All students on a programme listed above will be given a place. The course is not capped. The course is available with permission as an outside option.

Please contact finance.phd@lse.ac.uk with any queries.

Doctoral students in the Departments of Finance and Economics, and other students with the permission of the PhD Finance Programme Director.

The first half of the course provides an empirical treatment of major topics in corporate finance, and may include capital structure and financial policy, investment decisions, financing constraints, bankruptcy, corporate governance and the market for corporate control, banking and financial intermediation, household finance, consumer finance, finance and development (the list of topics may change year to year). A substantial emphasis will be placed on research design and empirical methods in finance applications. Students will spend a significant portion of time critically evaluating empirical papers.

The second half of the course will consist of presentations by 4-6 faculty members about their research and the broader literature in their research area.
 

30 hours of lectures in the Autumn Term.
30 hours of lectures in the Winter Term.

Readings will be mainly based on journal articles and working papers. Some useful reference textbooks: 
Tirole, Jean, The Theory of Corporate Finance, 2006, Princeton University Press.
Freixas, X. and Rochet, J.C., The Microeconomics of Banking, 1997, MIT Press.
J. Wooldridge, Econometric Analysis of Cross-Section and Panel Data, Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2002.
J. D. Angrist and J-S Pischke, Mostly Harmless Econometrics: An Empiricist’s Companion, Princeton University Press, 2009.
 

Continuous assessment (100%).