Finance

MIT has been named the top university in the world in the latest QS World University Rankings, reports Nick Morrison for Forbes. This is the fifth consecutive year that MIT has earned the number one spot in the QS rankings. 

Prof. Ricardo Caballero and his colleagues have found that due to the integrated nature of the world’s financial markets, “a slump in some economies can eventually engulf all of them.” The Economist notes that the researchers found “once a few economies become stuck in the zero-rate trap, their current-account surpluses exert a pull which threatens to drag in everyone else.”

Prof. Andrew Lo writes for The Wall Street Journal that robo advisors could prove helpful to investors if they are able to assist with managing emotions. “Instead of artificial intelligence, we should first conquer artificial emotion—by constructing algorithms that accurately capture human behavior, we can build countermeasures to protect us from ourselves." 

In an article for Reuters, James Saft writes that MIT researchers have found that analyzing Twitter sentiment can provide useful information for investors. “We exploit a new dataset of tweets referencing the Federal Reserve and show that the content of tweets can be used to predict future returns,” Prof. Andrew Lo and grad student Pablo Azar explain.

Prof. David Singer weighs in on the Federal Reserve’s decision to raise its target interest rate in this article for The Conversation. Singer writes that, “a less appreciated facet of liftoff is that the Fed’s balance sheet is now so large that raising interest rates is logistically and mechanically challenging.”

Financial Times reporter Rebecca Knight discusses MIT Sloan’s Master of Finance program and how to be a successful asset manager with Senior Lecturer Gita Rao. “It takes an incredible focus,” says Rao. “You have to be very decisive [and] you have to be an independent thinker.”

Research by the MIT AgeLab identified key practices and characteristics that clients value in financial advisors, reports Russ Alan Prince for Forbes. “Client satisfaction is essential for a successful financial advisory practice,” writes Prince. “While technical proficiency is what clients are supposedly ‘buying,’ other factors also prove to be very important.”

For his work developing pricing models, Prof. Stephen Ross has been awarded the Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, Reuters reports. The Center for Financial Studies, which awards the prize, said that, "Ross’s models have changed and advanced economic practice profoundly.”

Prof. Stephen Ross has won the 2015 Deutsche Bank Prize in Financial Economics, reports Jack Newsham for The Boston Globe. Jan Pieter Krahnen, director of the Center for Financial Studies, which presents the prize, explains that Ross’ work “has shaped today's thinking in financial innovation, practice, and policy.”

Robert Samuelson writes for The Washington Post about research by Professor Antoinette Schoar that indicates that risky loans were not the primary reason for the 2008 housing bubble. The crisis “was caused, at least in part, by a larger delusion that was the bubble’s root source,” writes Samuelson of the research. 

Financial Times reporter John Authers highlights Prof. Andrew Lo’s work examining how human aversion to risk impacts financial decisions. Lo’s research provides evidence that “investors in markets will take risk-averse actions rather than the purely rational decisions that economists have classically assumed."

Wall Street Journal reporter Chris Gay profiles several books examining the financial crisis, highlighting Prof. Simon Johnson’s book “13 Bankers.” In the book Johnson and his co-author, “trace two centuries of government attempts to grapple with the power of big finance,” Gay writes. 

Forbes reporter Susan Adams examines a new study co-authored by MIT Prof. Evan Apfelbaum that looks at how diversity impacts the performance of stock traders. The researchers compared groups of ethnically homogenous and diverse traders and found that “traders in the diverse group did a 58% better job at correctly pricing assets.”

Richard Eisenberg of Forbes writes about a symposium hosted by the MIT AgeLab, which explored the impact of Alzheimer’s and dementia on financial planning. The symposium “brought together a broad spectrum of experts ranging from Alzheimer’s Association execs to neurology professors to financial advisers to people who have early onset Alzheimer’s or are married to them,” writes Eisenberg.

Dr. Joseph Coughlin, director of the MIT Age Lab, collaborated on a study that indicates that grandchildren are likely to take financial advice from their grandparents, writes Kimberly Palmer of U.S. News & World Report. “Grandparents can tell stories and explain how they were able to muddle through or succeed,” says Coughlin.