Finance

Finance, in its simplest form, is the study of investors’ and firms’ financial decision making process. The science of Finance encompasses a great variety of subjects, including but not limited to corporate finance, investments, asset pricing, asset allocation, portfolio optimization, risk management, pricing of derivatives, and institutional funds management. The past 20 years has seen an explosive growth in financial markets and the variety of financial instruments traded in them. The enormous increases in the trading volumes of commodities, stocks, interest rates, foreign exchange, and their derivatives are all fueled by the increase in the computation power of computers, rapid exchange of information via the Internet, and the application of sophisticated mathematical and statistical methods in the creation and pricing of complex financial instruments. All these developments in the last two decades increased tremendously the importance of finance as a separate discipline within the broader area of business.

The Ph.D. program in Finance at Özyeğin University will provide students with a profound knowledge in finance, statistics, and econometrics; introduce numerical techniques for valuation, including pricing and hedging of financial investment instruments such as futures, options, and other derivatives; illustrate the important role of optimization in portfolio management, asset allocation, and risk management; present various computational applications/methods in solving financial problems.

Research Focus

Some general questions that research in Finance tries to answer are:

• How do agents in the financial industry (corporations, investors, financial intermediaries, central banks, and regulatory bodies) interact with each other?
• How do firms maximize shareholders’ value?
• How are financial assets priced in the market?
• What constitutes an optimal portfolio and how are optimal portfolios constructed and managed?
• How do shocks to the financial system propagate through the system?
• What is systemic risk and how can it be managed?
• What are the approaches to and challenges in measuring and managing financial risk?