School of Economics and Finance news
If you have news you would like to publicise, please contact Romany Kebar.
Randi Hjalmarsson - “Jury Discrimination in Criminal Trials,” is forthcoming in Quarterly Journal of Economics. (co-authored with Patrick Bayer and Shamena Anwar)
Francesca Cornaglia - "Productivity, Wages, and Marriage: The Case of Major League Baseball", published in the Wall Street Journal, The Economist and Forbes. The effect of marriage on productivity and, consequently, wages has been long debated in economics. A primary explanation for the impact of marriage on wages has been through its impact on productivity, however, there has been no direct evidence for this. In this paper, we aim to fill this gap by directly measuring the impact of marriage on productivity using a sample of professional baseball players from 1871 - 2007. Our results show that only lower ability men see an increase in productivity, though this result is sensitive to the empirical specification and weakly significant. In addition, despite the lack of any effect on productivity, high ability married players earn roughly 16 - 20 percent more than their single counterparts. We discuss possible reasons why employers may favour married men.
Post date: 1st February 2012
This semester, the School of Economics & Finance is running a number of ungraded modules with the aim of equipping students with further technical skills.
Below is information on what you can expect from two of the modules, all postgraduate students are welcome to attend:
Practical application of technical analysis in the financial markets - Deborah Owen
Mapping the markets - How cycle theory enables technical analysts to read equity markets
Deborah Owen, Chairperson of the Society of Technical Analysts and Managing Director of Investment Research of Cambridge, the first company in the UK to specialise in technical analysis. Deborah is co-author of 'Mapping the Markets'.
Pattern recognition - Clear patterns of price behaviour occur more often than the laws of chance would allow. Identifying these patterns enables traders to pick up market turning points.
George MacLean, Training Consultant, Linedata. George specialises in futures analysis and sovereign debt yield curve and spread analysis. He was formerly Director of European Technical Analysis at Standard & Poor's MMS.
Elliott Wave Analysis - harnessing the power of Elliott Wave analysis with the discipline of trend following.
Murray Gunn, Head of Technical Analysis, HSBC Bank. Murray is author of 'Trading Regime Analysis'.
Trend and momentum - using trend and momentum to capture market moves. Incorporating short term indicators to these trends can determine whether they are oversold or overbought.
George MacLean, Training Consultant, Linedata.
The power of technical analysis to predict collective behaviour in financial markets - The importance of crowd behaviour and mental discipline to successful trading.
Tony Plummer is the director of Helmsman Economics Ltd, a company that is dedicated to the analysis of economic and financial market behaviour from the perspective of history. He is a former director of Hambros Bank Ltd, of Hambros Fund Management Plc, and of Rhombus Research Ltd. Tony is the author of 'Forecasting Financial Markets', which is regarded as a seminal work on the influence of crowd psychology in financial markets. The book was first published in 1989, is now in its sixth edition, and has been translated into a number of languages.
Applied Portfolio Management – Jesse McDougall
(Evenings, 2 hour sessions)
The course will give a detailed look at how portfolio managers take finance theory and apply it in a real world setting. We look at Traditional equity portfolio management, fixed income portfolio management, hedging with derivatives, as well as how hedge funds operate. Particular emphasis will be spent on Alternative Asset Management portfolios and techniques, i.e., how hedge fund strategies work in practice. Practitioner taught by a Portfolio Manager of a Quantitative, Statistically-Driven strategy at a mid-sized Hedge Fund in the City.
Post date: 1st February 2012
This term has brought with it a variety of well-attended Careers events.
October boasted the QM Careers ‘Focus on Finance fortnight’, where a team from SEF won the ‘XING’ competition, and there were employer and alumni led events about working in risk, consultancy, financial planning and banking. Throughout the term there has been a high demand for Careers drop-in sessions, where students bring their queries for a short 1-2-1, reflecting how first years through to post-graduates are aware of the need to be securing relevant work experience and skills-building part-time work.
A highlight of the Careers events programme was the ‘Insight weeks and Internships forum’. At this, students who gained work experience last summer through family networks, speculative applications and the formal internship application channels shared their insights with others. This showed just how many ways there are to find work experience. Another great success was ‘Linked Up’, where nine-students each met 2 alumni working in finance for a 1-2-1, and learnt about the reality of working in different areas of finance.
On a personal note, I’ve been delighted to see some of the students who have used the Careers support succeed in gaining competitive insight weeks and internships at financial firms. I look forward in 2012 to seeing even more events and successes!
Post date: 1st February 2012
The National Students Survey (NSS) is a yearly survey directed at all final year students in all disciplines across all Universities in the UK. The survey includes 22 statements divided in 6 sections: teaching, assessment, support, organisation, personal development and learning resources.
The aim of the survey is to give students the opportunity of expressing their views about their learning experience at University. The NSS results are commonly used in setting league tables published by leading British newspapers.
The 2011 NSS results were very positive for the School of Economics and Finance. 93% of the students rated their overall learning experience as either good or very good. This result places the School in seventh position among all UK Economics Schools for students satisfaction. In London the School is ranked second behind Greenwich University and first among the research intensive Universities.
The 2012 NSS will open in January and will conclude by the end of April. Final year students can complete the survey at any time during this period and a response rate of at lest 50% is required for the results to be published. The School hopes to repeat the excellent result achieved in 2011 and invites all final year students to participate to the survey.
The online survey can be accessed from the NSS website at:
http://www.thestudentsurvey.com/
Post date: 1st February 2012
The computer lab in W307 now hosts 10 Bloomberg terminals for exclusive use by the School’s students. Bloomberg is one of the market leaders in providing business, economics and financial data to decision makers and the terminals give you access to the full Bloomberg set of financial and economics data.
In collaboration with Bloomberg, the School will organise a number of training sessions aimed at explaining the software’s functionalities to all students. One training session has already taken place in the first semester and more are planned for the new semester. Details of the training sessions will be circulated by email and posted on the School’s website.
Post date: 1st February 2012
Professor Martin Weale, prominent member of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee and Visiting Professor within the School has delivered two very interesting talks on the UK monetary policy and on quantitative easing to all our postgraduate and undergraduate students.
Students will have the opportunity of engaging again with Martin in the second semester when he will be moderating a students-led debate on the Euro crisis. More details of the event will be circulated soon. Keep checking your email!
Post date: 1st February 2012
Would you like to know what careers are available to graduates in Economics and Finance? Would you like to know what careers best fit your own skills? The School of Economics and Finance has created an online database that allows you to browse through a large number of careers available to graduates in economics and finance in industries such as banking, finance, law and the public sector. The database has been put together with the invaluable help of two current students: Shweta Upadhyaya and Igor Tkachuk!
The database is available at: http://www.econ.qmul.ac.uk/economics-careers
You can search the database by skills in order to identify the careers that best fit your own personal skills, or by industry according to the type of industry you would like to pursue your career in
Post date: 1st February 2012
This year the QUMMIF Postgraduate Investment Club will be arranging various internal and external events. Some of the events planned for this year are;
- Portfolio Manager Day Event taught on campus on various aspects of portfolio/ risk management by our very own professors; Jessie McDougall and Patrick Boyle.
- Bloomberg and VBA Automatic Trading Integration Workshop with Training Traders Partnership. This will be a great opportunity to learn about the Bloomberg terminal.
- Anton Kreil - Institute of Trading and Portfolio Management Be A Professional Trader 1 Day Workshop. (Ex Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Trader)
- Bloomberg Live Market News / Rumour Trading
- Etiquette Event; where associate members of the club will have the opportunity to learn the code of behaviour expected within the confines of business and society
- Ball Event at Rocket Restaurant. An end of the year event for all associates, sponsors, recruiters, members and staff of the University.
- Queen Mary as a CISI Centre of Excellence
More information on these events will be available closer to the time, please look out for emails! This academic year's QUMMIF team are as follows;
- Tomasz Mlynowski- President
- Muyang Chen - Deputy President
- Adnan Khan Jan - Vice President
- Anton Truhhan - Vice President Training and Development.
- Alexandr Shrestha- Vice President Sales
- Hirija Sugandiran - Vice President Events Management and Logistics
- Lan Hsuan Tseng- Vice President Treasury
If you have any queries regarding the above events, please contact Hirija Sugandiran: h.sugandiran@qummif.org for further information.
Post date: 1st February 2012
The School of Economics and Finance PhD Presentation meeting, in collaboration with the Royal Economic Society, was held at the weekend and was a huge success. Out of 300 initial submissions, 200 people presented their research papers, consisting of approximately 150 contributed talks and 50 posters.
The event was also attended by about 80 Economics staff from around 30 other institutions, plus external visitors and our own students and staff, bringing the total count to over 300.
We hope everyone got what they wanted from the conference and had an enjoyable weekend as well.
Post date: 24th January 2012
If you would be interested in taking part, please contact Student Support Manager Agatha Jones on a.m.jones@qmul.ac.uk.
Post date: 20th January 2012
