MPhil Finance

Research overview

Our research focuses around the following themes:

Asset Pricing

• Anomalies
• Option Pricing
• Risk
• Cost of Capital
• Firm Valuation
• Volatility Models
• Mutual Funds Return Predictability

Corporate Finance

• Cost of Capital
• Executive Compensation
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Venture Capital
• Private Equity and Entrepreneurship
• Corporate Governance in Emerging Markets
• Cash Holdings and Payout Policies

Applied Financial Econometrics

• Risk measurement
• Portfolio management
• Asset allocation
• Quantitative trading strategies
• Modelling asset price dynamics
• Modelling exchange rates and commodities

Market-Based Account Research

• Firm fundamentals and stock returns
• Equity valuation and accounting conservatism
• Implied cost of capital
• Macro-economy/Political economy
• Firm fundamentals.

You’ll be part of a vibrant research community, with more than 150 current doctoral students. We will foster what makes each of you unique, with an individual training-needs assessment informing the training and support we provide throughout your studies. This will include access to research methods expertise, graduate skills training programmes, and wider support provided through professional associations and Research Councils.

Careers
Skills training

The skills and expertise that you build now are fundamental to your continuing professional development (CPD), and will be part of your toolset throughout your working life.

We strongly recommend that our students take part in the University's Postgraduate Researchers' Programme, which offers training in skills such as:

• research management
• personal effectiveness
• communication
• networking
• team-working
• career management

You’ll need a good first degree (ie, at least the equivalent of an Upper Second Class Honours Degree from a UK university) in the relevant subject, and a taught Masters degree in the discipline is normally required. Applicants with ESRC-accredited Masters degrees are especially welcome to apply, as are those with merit or distinction level qualifications. Masters degrees should be in a subject relevant to the proposed research, and it is particularly advantageous if research methods and techniques as well as independent research (eg, dissertation or project) featured prominently in the curriculum.