“At this time there are already more than 700 participants enrolled for the EFA 2019, and we hope that the final number will exceed 800”, said Miguel Ferreira, a Nova SBE professor and director of its Scientific Council who drew up the conference programme.
The event is to attract hundreds of financial economists from the world’s leading business schools and universities.
This will be the second time that the annual conference of the EFA, a professional association of financial economists, has taken place in Portugal. The first was in 1992 – also at Universidade Nova.
“That is why it is a huge privilege to once more … organise this conference and bring to Nova SBE and to Portugal great names of research and teaching in the area of finance,” said Ferreira, explaining that over the three days speakers are to present results from their work and discuss themes central to the field, to industry and to society.
Topics will include investments and financial markets, behavioural finance, company finances, corporate governance, financial intermediation and financial institutions, personal finances, international finance, property finance and the management of financial assets.
While most participants are researchers, teachers, PhD students and professionals in the financial industry, Ferreira said, the conference also “has a clear impact on civil society in various ways” given that developments in the financial system have a knock-on effect on the economy and on society.
At the same time, he stressed, for Portugal it is “a promoter of the country’s development, as it supports and encourages the development of local services and the tourism sector itself in Portugal.”
This year’s event is to feature 81 sessions with a total of 243 studies being presented. According to Ferreira, there will be two special sessions with the Bank of Portugal and the European Commission, and also a guest speaker: Harvard University professor Andrei Shleifer of, whom he described as “the most cited economist in the world” and a pioneer of the study of the importance of countries’ legal systems, specifically in regard to the protection of minority investors, for financial development.
