Finance

The Ph.D. program offers a specialization in finance. Dissertations completed by finance Ph.D. students at FAU have focused on a wide variety of research topics in finance, including initial public offerings, acquisitions of bankrupt firms, mergers, bond offerings, mutual funds, investment banking, bank regulation, and poison pills. Graduates of the Ph.D. program have taken faculty positions at numerous universities identified on the Ph.D. program website.

Finance Requirements

The Ph.D. in Finance requires 57 credit hours of course work earned in the program (beyond the typical credit hours earned during the master's degree) and an additional minimum of 18 credit hours for the dissertation.
An extra tool course or finance course may be assigned in place of a finance course listed here that is not offered. The program is designed to allow for many opportunities for conducting research. For students who had any course listed here, a substitute course will be assigned by the Ph.D. advisor.

Tool Courses
QMB 7565 Research Methods I
ACG 7885 Data Retrieval and Analysis
ECO 6403 Mathematical Economics
ECO 6404 Econometrics
ECO 6424 Advanced Topics in Econometrics
ECO 6115 Microeconomics
Course on University Teaching

Finance Courses
FIN 6246 Financial Markets
FIN 6436 Financial Management and Investment Decisions
FIN 6515 Investments
FIN 6537 Risk Management
FIN 6605 Multinational Finance
FIN 6804 Financial Theory
FIN 6806 Corporate Finance
FIN 7247 Seminar in Capital Markets
FIN 7527 Seminar In Investments
FIN 7449 Seminar in Corporate Financial Theory
FIN 7932 Seminar on Current Topics (usually used for Int'l Finance Seminar)

Electives
Two elective courses are decided by the student in consultation with the Ph.D. student advisor in the Department of Finance.

Dissertation
The dissertation in Finance involves comprehensive research on a finance topic that is a significant contribution beyond the foundation of related research. Dissertations by FAU's Ph.D. students in Finance have been completed on topics such as initial public offerings (IPOs), mutual fund performance, international acquisitions, regulation of financial institutions, stock market bubbles and overreaction, and stock options.

Finance Ph.D. students are expected to remain at FAU for one year after the completion of their course work and Comprehensive Exam so that they can focus full-time on completing their dissertation.

More Information
For more detailed information about pursuing a Ph.D. in Finance, please see the Guide for Finance Ph.D

For information about the academic job market for Ph.D. students click here.

If you have questions about the Finance area of concentration, contact the Ph.D. student advisor in finance, Dr. Jeff Madura, maduraj@fau.edu.

Finance Faculty

The finance faculty of FAU have conducted research on topics such as: anti-takeover amendments, bank exposure to interest rate risk, stock options, currency option pricing, distressed residential mortgages, mutual fund operations, corporate dividend policy, acquisitions, bond pricing, and corporate governance. The finance faculty have had research published in most quality finance journals, including Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Money, Banking, and Credit, Journal of Financial Research, Financial Management, and Financial Review.