41st Annual Meeting of the European Finance Association

The European Finance Association (EFA), founded in 1974, is the leading association of researchers in finance and banking in Europe. Its aim is to provide a professional society for academics and practitioners with an interest in financial management, financial theory and its application. The EFA and its Annual Meeting (academic conference) serve as a focal point of communication for its European and international members. EFA’s flagship journal is the Review of Finance, a peer-reviewed journal that publishes high-quality papers in all areas of financial economics.The conference attracts over 650 economists from top business schools and universities. These thought leaders act as consultants for governments, are expert witnesses in court cases and teach future generations of business leaders. Out of the 1,800 research papers submitted for presentation, only 200 are selected by a committee of academics from top universities around the world. This stringent selection process ensures the high quality of the finance research presented at the conference.The Annual Meetings are hosted by a different university each year. It is seen a great honor for the University of Lugano (USI) to host European Finance Association’s 41st Annual Meeting from August 27 to 30, 2014, taking place at the Palazzo dei Congressi (Conference Center) in Lugano. The conference will host 72 sessions over three-and-a-half days, includes a doctoral tutorial and the formal EFA Annual Meeting. The keynote speaker is going to be American Professor Robert J. Shiller, a 2013 Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics. Robert Shiller is known as the founder of “behavioral finance” research and a pioneer in financial market volatility and the dynamics of asset prices studies.The objective of EFA 2014 is to connect Swiss research and its finance industry in order to improve the knowledge transfer among these two worlds. Thanks to the involvement of the Swiss Financial Institute, he FA Annual Meeting offers a half-day special industry forum on August 29, 2014. We expect an additional 100 practitioners from Switzerland to attend the Friday sessions. This results in a total of 750 participants.