|
Smith Finance PhD Program
Student Life
Year 1:
- Courses: Two-semester sequences of PhD courses in microeconomics,
econometrics or statistics, and finance.
- Research Methods: A special one-year course on the methods and language
of modern finance research. Hands on work in understanding, accessing, and
merging several financial databases, replicating recent literature, and
become capable of independently executing own work.
- Summer One: Take qualifying exams and write an independent research
paper.
Year 2:
- Advanced seminars in finance. Typical topics include industrial
organization and corporate finance, empirical asset pricing, mathematical
finance, and dynamic corporate finance theory.
- Advanced electives in finance-related areas. This could include advanced
game theory, labor economics, auctions, macroeconomics, stochastic
processes, time series and panel data econometrics, or computational
methods.
- Develop some idea about thesis topic areas.
- Summer Two: Comprehensive exams to progress to “ABD” or (all but
dissertation).
Year 3:
- Search for and refine research topics through faculty interactions,
additional courses if needed and outside and internal seminars.
- Pick a thesis advisor.
- Present a third year paper in summer three.
Year 4:
- Nail down thesis topic and draft one to two essays.
- Form thesis committee.
- Schedule and possibly defend proposal.
Year 5:
- Complete proposal defense.
- Enter the job market (in December/January).
- Graduate at the end of year five.
A complete description of the PhD program is in the PhD Handbook.
|
