The PhD program in Finance focuses on research in financial economics, and most recently has studied phenomena such as corporate governance, restructurings, mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, corporate valuations, corporate diversification, corporate disclosures, equity-based compensation, and issues related to international corporate finance. The finance group mentors students with an apprenticeship model, providing an early start in research projects both by and with faculty.

Over successive five-year periods between 1980 and 2014, graduates of the Katz PhD in Finance program ranked between 28th and 49th among doctoral programs worldwide depending mon the specific time interval over which productivity was measured. Most recently, our graduates ranked as the 17th most productive among finance graduates of U.S. public universities the 39th most productive among all programs worldwide. This is especially impressive given that the rankings do not make adjustments for differences in the number of graduates across programs.

Considering we are a relatively small program, our graduates have had an outsized impact in terms of producing high-impact research published in the leading finance academic journals.The upside of our small program size is that it allows for frequent interactions and collaborations among our faculty and our PhD students.