A paper describing how genetics affect investor decisions has intrigued many of his colleagues and also just won an award.
Henrik Cronqvist, the McMahon Family Chair in Corporate Finance and George R. Roberts Fellow, is recently back from Israel, where a paper he co-wrote with Robert Day School of Economics and Finance colleague Amir Barnea, as well as Stephan Siegel of the University of Washington's Michael G. Foster School of Business, grabbed the Best Paper Award at the Rothschild Caesarea Center 7th Annual Academic Conference held at IDC in Herzliya, May 31-June 1.
Titled "Nature or Nurture: What Determines Investor Behavior?", the trio's research cross-referenced nearly 38,000 twins in the Swedish Twin Registry, the world's largest database of twins, with comprehensive personal financial data collected by the Swedish government. This allowed a comprehensive method to measure genetic versus environmental impact on investing and personal finance.
CMC student Hannah Gregg '12 also participated in the research project through her work as a research analyst at the Financial Economics Institute (FEI) at Claremont McKenna. The project received generous research funding from both the FEI and the Lowe Institute of Political Economy at CMC, Cronqvist says.
It's not the only award for Cronqvist this spring. Just a few weeks ago, the CMC associate professor of financial economics also won a Best Paper Award at the 18th Mitsui Finance Symposium on Governance and Markets, at the University of Michigan's Stephen M. Ross School of Business, May 21-22.
The paper, "Behavioral Consistency in Corporate Finance: CEO Personal Leverage and Corporate Leverage" is co-authored with Anil Makhija and Scott Yonker of the Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business. Cronqvist says that CMCers Alexander Bonnett '09 MA '10, Rishi Desai '09, and Hannah Gregg '12 contributed to that paper's findings as well, also as research analysts at the Financial Economics Institute (FEI) at CMC.
"We have worked tirelessly on these projects for two years and it is really great to see that our efforts get recognized," Cronqvist says.