Quantitative Methods I & II, Research Methods, Financial Economics, Corporate Finance I & II.

- Understand the main identification issues present in the design of empirical studies in Corporate Finance. - Identify the key econometric techniques used in the literature to address or mitigate identification problems. - Apply the most appropriate technique for each study. - Evaluate the performance of an investment fund in terms of risk-return. - Assess investment fund performance using Conditional Performance Evaluation measures. - Understand the different agency problems in Collective Investment Institutions and their implications. - Analyze the effects of outsourcing in portfolio management and the techniques used to extract performance results. - Understand conflicts of interest and their assessment in Collective Investment Institutions, specifically in Mutual Funds and Hedge Funds. - Examine window dressing behaviors in Collective Investment Institutions. - Identify different performance evaluation measures for Hedge Funds. - Analyze various issues related to the management of Collective Investment Institutions using the main econometric techniques applied in the literature.

1) Main identification concerns in an Empirical Corporate Finance Setting 2) Overview of methods to solve identification problems 3) Instrumental Variables 4) Experiments and Quasi-experiments: the difference-in-differences estimators 5) Regression discontinuity 6) Matching methods 7) Other methods: discrete choice models and introduction to structural estimation 8) Introduction to Investment Companies 9) Traditional Performance measures in IC 10) Others Performance Measures in IC 11) Empirical Research in IC: Corporate Governance, Agency Problems, Risk issues. (Special case:Outsourcing in Mutual funds)

- Discussion of the empirical strategy used in recently published papers in top journals - Empirical work using statistical and analytical software (STATA, R, Matlab, etc.) - Lectures There will be a regular schedule of office hours. Collective office hours will be arranged upon request.