Ph.D. Program Guidebook - The University of Chicago Booth School ...

Ph.D. Program Guidebook 2007-2008
FINANCE
The finance Ph.D. Program is concerned with such areas as: (1) the behavior and
determinants of security prices, including stocks, bonds, options, and futures; (2) portfolio
management; (3) the management of corporate and public funds, including the choice of
investment projects and the choice of sources of funds; and (4) the management and
regulation of financial institutions. Students take courses from both the Graduate School of
Business and the Department of Economics as part of their training.
When fulfilling general PhD degree requirements, please make sure to consult the relevant
section of the Guidebook that discusses those requirements (e.g., curriculum paper
requirements in Chapter 2, co-authorship rules in Chapter 5), in addition to area specific
requirements (if any).
Finance as a Dissertation Area:
For students writing a dissertation in finance, the General Examination requirements are:
Six finance course requirement: Students must take at least six finance courses as
stipulated below:
• The following four required classes: B35901, B35902, B35903 – Theory of
Financial Decisions I-II-III; and B35904 – Asset Pricing
• At least two from this list:
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o
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o
o
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B35905 – Topics in Empirical Finance
B35906 – Behavioral Finance
B35907 – Topics in Asset Pricing
B35908 – Research Projects
B35909 – Topics in Asset Pricing
B35910 – Asset Pricing and Macroeconomics
B35911 – Observable Implications of Equilibrium Models in
Macroeconomics and Finance
B35920 – Enterprise and the Evaluation of Financial Systems: Applied
General Equilibrium Analysis
B35132 – Financial Engineering: Mathematical Models of Option Pricing
and Their Estimation
Students must obtain a grade point average of at least 3.5 out of 4.0 in the six finance
courses. Students must complete this course work by the end of the spring quarter of
their second year. At the discretion of the finance faculty, a student who has passed
the “Second Year Paper in Finance Requirement” (see below) but who has not met
the “Six Finance Course Requirement,” may be allowed to continue in the Finance
Dissertation Area conditional on meeting the “Six Finance Course Requirement” by
the end of the spring quarter of the student’s third year.
The required courses and the standard of performance in them seek to ensure that a
student masters the body of knowledge that the academic world has come to expect
of students trained at Chicago. The rules also ensure that a student will have some
class contact with different faculty who may later serve on thesis committees.
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