The PhD in Finance at EDHEC Business School balances coursework and the dissertation to help participants acquire the tools, attitudes, and experience to develop into autonomous researchers and innovators. The four core courses impart a thorough knowledge of financial theory and its literature and a solid comprehension of advanced analytical and research methods in financial economics. PhD candidates select five or more elective seminars and attend research workshops and presentations to acquire an intimate and detailed understanding of the most recent theoretical and modelling advances in their field of specialisation. Participants work closely with faculty and alongside the EDHEC Risk and Asset Management Research Centre to author insightful dissertations that advance financial knowledge and practices and are worthy of publication in scientific journals.

The presential requirement of the programme is limited to around 40 days and can be completed in eight residential weeks over three years with the bulk of courses taken during the first two years of the programme. Core courses are structured into weekly blocks and should be completed over the first academic year of the programme; electives should be concentrated over the second year. Elective seminars are offered over three consecutive days in six-day blocks to give participants flexibility in scheduling and ease management of the demands of work, programme, and personal life. Research workshops and presentations take place in EDHEC’s e-learning classroom to allow remote participation and asynchronous access. Work on the dissertation should begin in the second half of the first year and the dissertation proposal should be completed at the start of the second year. All PhD candidates will be required to present the progress of their dissertation research to faculty and peers at two formal presentations before oral defence. Candidates will work closely with their supervisor during all phases of the dissertation process.

Programme core courses and elective seminars are concentrated into residential weeks, the classroom is extended over the Internet for research workshops and presentations, and dissertation supervision is adapted to individual circumstances. This creates a rich collaborative environment amongst all the participants and close working relationships between PhD candidates and faculty.

Timely completion of this challenging and rewarding programme demands that participants commit approximately 20 hours per week to readings, assignments, and independent research.

Prerequisites

Programme prerequisites are economics and econometrics. PhD in Finance candidates on the “residential track” who may be lacking in these fields have the opportunity to take supplementary graduate courses at EDHEC Business School during the first year of their doctoral studies while ad-hoc off-site and distance-learning solutions are provided to participants on the “executive track”.

Core Courses

Core courses offer PhD in Finance candidates sound training in financial theory and analytical methods so that they can take on a broad variety of research assignments. Core courses are delivered in the first year of the programme to provide candidates with the methodological tools and necessary conceptual breadth required to decide upon a field of specialisation and refine their research projects. A comprehensive examination closes the cycle of core courses.

The EDHEC PhD in Finance requires four core courses:

Financial Economics

The objective of this course is to study the theoretical foundations of modern financial economics. The main themes covered will include decision making theories under uncertainty, individual consumption and investment decisions under uncertainty, capital market equilibrium and asset valuation, factor models and consumption-based asset pricing. These themes will be explored in an intertemporal discrete time framework.

Corporate Finance

This course covers a wide range of topics in the modern theory of corporate finance. Topics include capital structure decisions, distribution policy, financial intermediation, incomplete financial contracting, initial and seasoned public offerings, market for corporate control, corporate reorganisation and bankruptcy, financing in imperfect markets, security design under adverse selection, and moral hazard.

Continuous-Time Financial Economics

This course covers continuous-time models for pricing equity derivatives, models for the term structure of interest rates and pricing fixed-income derivatives, optimal consumption and portfolio choices, and dynamic asset pricing in equilibrium models. The emphasis will be on acquiring the technical tools required for solving continuous-time finance problems of pricing and investments.

Empirical Methods in Finance

This course focuses on applications of econometric methods in finance. Topics include estimation and testing of asset pricing models, return predictability in time-series and cross sections, and issues related to volatility processes, continuous-time processes, dynamic conditional moments, extreme values, long memory, dynamic mixture models, transaction data, microstructure of financial markets, behavioural finance, and event studies.

Each course is of 25 hours’ duration and all four courses are mandatory.

Elective Research Seminars

Elective research seminars expose PhD candidates to the latest research advances in specific fields, providing them with opportunities to develop a specialisation and acquire additional knowledge and skills necessary for their dissertation work.

For 2009/2012, the tentative catalogue of elective research seminars is as follows:

• Advanced Asset Pricing
• Advanced Corporate Finance
• Advanced Derivatives
• Alternative Investments
• Dynamic Allocation Methods
• Recent Developments in Portfolio Allocation and Macro Finance Models
• Volatility Modelling
• Monte Carlo Methods in Finance
• Behavioural Finance

Dissertation work starts in the first year of the programme with the drafting of a proposal to be submitted before the beginning of the second year and intensifies as course requirements wane. PhD candidates are required to communicate the progress of their dissertation research to faculty and peers at two formal presentations scheduled in the second and third years of the programme. The dissertation should be completed and defended at the end of the third year of the programme. During all phases of the dissertation process, candidates work closely with their director.

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