In real life, information asymmetry is ubiquitous.
Sometimes, should you know certain insider information, you would have made exactly the opposite decision.
I compiled this page to help alleviate the information barrier facing junior PhD students and academic staff in finance.
Conference info on SSRN
Economics: https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/janda/professional-announcements/?annsNet=205Finance: https://www.ssrn.com/index.cfm/en/janda/professional-announcements/?annsNet=203Funny Readings
Joshua S. Gans and George B. Shepherd, 1994. How are the mighty fallen: Rejected classic articles by leading economists. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 8(1), 165-179.
You will read that a lot of classic papers were initially rejected, and some with ridiculous and capricious referee reports. Examples included Sharpe's paper on CAPM, Black and Scholes' paper on option pricing, to name a few.Roberto Serrano, 2018. Top5itis. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3103083.
Economists are obsessed with the top 5 journals (Econometrica, QJE, JPE, AER, and RES). What caused this obsession and what are the consequences?Matthew Spiegel, 2012. Reviewing Less—Progressing More. Review of Financial Studies, 25(5), 1331–1338.
A good referee should be lenient and not drag the authors into endless revisions. Since most papers have marginal contribution, there is no need to dwell on small points.Online Video Resources
American Finance Association: YouTube
Accounting and Economics Society: Website; YouTube [areas: accounting, asset pricing, corporate finance]
NBER Lectures: Website [areas: macro finance, econometrics, applied micro, etc]
Microstructure Exchange: Website; YouTube [areas: market microstructure, asset pricing]
Virtual Derivatives: YouTube [areas: derivatives, financial markets]
PACICC Webinars: YouTube [areas: insurance, risk management]
Egyptian Online Seminars in Business, Accounting and Economics, hosted by Mohammad Elsalkh: YouTube [area: accounting]
QuantUniversity Channel: YouTube [areas: machine learning, asset pricing]
TBS “Inspiring Guest”: YouTube [area: business, introductory level - good supplementary materials to undergrads]
Critical Accounting, by Cameron Graham at York University: YouTube [area: accounting]
Short Courses on Generative AI: DeepLearning.AI [area: Business Analytics]
Readings for Job Seekers
PeterIliev, 2016. Finance Job Market Advice. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2779200
Dr. Illiev received a PhD in Economics from Brown University and is now an associate professor of finance at the Pennsylvania State University.Alexander W. Butler and Timothy Falcon Crack, 2021. The Academic Job Market in Finance: An Updated Rookie's Guide. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2109794
Industry Jobs
Gorick Ng, 2021. The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Starting Your Career Off Right, Harvard Business Review Press.
Special Sources for Women in Finance
Women in Microstructure: Google Site Link
Early Career Women in Finance Conference (ECWFC): Google Site Link
Miscellaneous (to be added)
Finance, Organization and Markets (FOM) Research Group: Google Site Link
Workpalce Bullying
Heinz Leymann said: "In the highly industrialized western world, the workplace is the only remaining 'battle field' where people can 'kill' each other without running the risk of being taken to court." In academia, bullying is pervasive due to the innate power structure. Worse still, the bully often gets allies because forming a clique can bring personal benefits.
Zhuoyi (Zoe) Zhao, my fellow student at Laurier, and I wrote a short paper on workplace envy and bullying when we were PhD students. While the current version is rather preliminary, we plan to make the paper a long-term project. Below is a list of readings that motivate us to take more effort into the topic.
Chakravartty, Paula. "Of Academic Hierarchies and Harassment," Medium, Feb 10, 2021. Link
Other Thoughts
As a reviewer for a few journals, I am surprised to see that none of the papers I reviewed is well-written in the first place. Some had to go through nontrivial revisions in the second round because the authors left apparent flaws. But thanks to the reviewing process and copy-editing, the authors improved tremendously in the logic flow and clarity in the published version.
Based on my experience, the number of journals you try follows a scaled arcsine distribution. That is, either your paper hits the first journal you submitted to, or you go through multiple rejections before the paper is finally accepted.
Common Problems in Teaching
Teaching is not easy - below are some problems my colleagues and I have encountered in the past.
In some circumstances, you feel that you are a customer service representative facing grumpy customers who will not yield to rules unless you satisfy their (sometimes unreasonable) requests.
Demanding good marks without working hard. This became more severe when false requests for accommodations and grievances were approved by the admin staff, who knew nothing about the student's actual stuation.
Unfounded complaints on the course contents. Students want to know the exact questions that will appear in the exams, which is impossible.
Why Insurers Fail
Why Insurers Fail is PACICC's annual research report that features one theme each year. Here is a link to the reports in the past years (2007-2022): Google Drive Link
Survival Strategies in Academia
William Thomson, 2011. A Guide for the Young Economist (2nd ed). MIT Press.
Michael S. Weisbach, 2021. The Economist’s Craft: An Introduction to Research, Publishing, and Professional Development. Princeton University Press.
Marc F. Bellemare, 2022. Doing Economics: What You Should Have Learned in Grad School―But Didn’t. MIT Press.