Bendheim Center for Finance (BCF) is an interdisciplinary center at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

. It was established in 1997 at the initiative of Ben Bernanke and is dedicated to research and education in the area of money and finance, in lieu of there not being a full professional business school at Princeton.

Mission

Bendheim Center for Finance pushes the frontier in research and teaching in money and finance to serve our global society by supporting a technologically modern and stable international financial architecture.

Faculty

While most of the Bendheim Center's faculty comes from Princeton's department of economics, the center also draws its faculty from other fields such as

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

, and

operations research Operations research ( en-GB, operational research) (U.S. Air Force Specialty Code: Operations Analysis), often shortened to the initialism OR, is a discipline that deals with the development and application of analytical methods to improve decis ...

. The Bendheim Center for Finance's current and past faculty have been honored with prizes, fellowships, and awards. The

Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, officially the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel ( sv, Sveriges riksbanks pris i ekonomisk vetenskap till Alfred Nobels minne), is an economics award administered ...

has been awarded to Daniel Kahneman (2002),

Paul Krugman Paul Robin Krugman ( ; born February 28, 1953) is an American economist, who is Distinguished Professor of Economics at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, and a columnist for ''The New York Times''. In 2008, Krugman was ...

(2008), and

Christopher Sims Christopher Albert Sims (born October 21, 1942) is an American econometrician and macroeconomist. He is currently the John J.F. Sherrerd '52 University Professor of Economics at Princeton University. Together with Thomas Sargent, he won the No ...

(2011). The

John Bates Clark Medal The John Bates Clark Medal is awarded by the American Economic Association to "that American economist under the age of forty who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge." The award is named after the ...

has been given to Yuliy Sannikov in 2016. Sannikov (2015) and Harrison Hong (2009) have been awarded the

Fischer Black Prize Fischer Black Prize is a memorial prize awarded in honor of Fischer Black that rewards individual financial research. The prize was established in 2002 and first awarded in 2003. It is awarded to a financial scientist for a body of work that demonst ...

Markus Brunnermeier Markus Konrad Brunnermeier (born March 22, 1969) is an economist, who is the Edwards S. Sanford Professor of Economics at Princeton University, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. He is a faculty ...

obtained the Germán Bernácer Prize (2008). Daniel Kahneman has been honored with the

Presidential Medal of Freedom The Presidential Medal of Freedom is the highest civilian award of the United States, along with the Congressional Gold Medal. It is an award bestowed by the president of the United States to recognize people who have made "an especially merit ...

(2013).

(2004) and Wei Xiong (2012) won the Smith Breeden Prize.

Atif Mian Atif Rehman Mian ( ur, ; born 28 June 1975) is a Pakistani-American economist who serves as the John H. Laporte Jr. Class of 1967 Professor of Economics, Public Policy, and Finance at Princeton University, and as the Director of the Julis-Ra ...

(2010) and

(2013) won the Distinguished Paper

Brattle Prize ''The Journal of Finance'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Finance Association. It was established in 1946 and is considered to be one of the premier finance journals. The editor-in-chief i ...

. Various faculty members have been named

Fellow of the Econometric Society In the scientific discipline of economics, the Econometric Society is a learned society devoted to the advancement of economics by using mathematical and statistical methods. This article is a list of its (current and in memory) fellows. Fellows ...

, Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics, Fellow of the

Institute of Mathematical Statistics The Institute of Mathematical Statistics is an international professional and scholarly society devoted to the development, dissemination, and application of statistics and probability. The Institute currently has about 4,000 members in all parts o ...

, Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association,

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the a ...

, or

Sloan Fellow The Sloan Fellows program is the world's first mid-career and senior career master's degree in general management and leadership. It was initially supported by a grant from Alfred P. Sloan, the late CEO of General Motors, to his alma mater, MI ...

Research

The Bendheim Center for Finance obtained a stellar academic reputation within few years, benefiting from its faculty's focus on financial imperfections and

behavioral Behavior (American English) or behaviour (British English) is the range of actions and mannerisms made by individuals, organisms, systems or artificial entities in some environment. These systems can include other systems or organisms as we ...

elements which experienced an unprecedented boost in public interest and academic research after the burst of the

dot-com bubble The dot-com bubble (dot-com boom, tech bubble, or the Internet bubble) was a stock market bubble in the late 1990s, a period of massive growth in the use and adoption of the Internet. Between 1995 and its peak in March 2000, the Nasdaq Compo ...

in 2000. Similarly, the faculty's empirical research on housing and theories incorporating financial frictions and the financial sector into macro and monetary models contributed to the Bendheim Center's outstanding reputation as these are at the heart of the rethinking of macroeconomics,

monetary economics Monetary economics is the branch of economics that studies the different competing theories of money: it provides a framework for analyzing money and considers its functions (such as medium of exchange, store of value and unit of account), and ...

, financial regulation, and the international financial architecture triggered by the great recession.

Academic programs

The Bendheim Center for Finance offers teaching and supervision to

undergraduate Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, an entry-le ...

and graduate students. The center has close ties with Princeton's Department of Economics.

Undergraduate certificate in finance

Princeton University's

students of all departments can earn a certificate attesting their proficiency in the area of finance from the Bendheim Center. Prerequisites for admission focus on skills in mathematics,

probability theory Probability theory is the branch of mathematics concerned with probability. Although there are several different probability interpretations, probability theory treats the concept in a rigorous mathematical manner by expressing it through a set ...

and statistics. The two core courses deal with asset pricing and corporate finance. The elective courses cover areas such as

behavioral finance Behavioral economics studies the effects of psychological, cognitive, emotional, cultural and social factors on the decisions of individuals or institutions, such as how those decisions vary from those implied by classical economic theory. ...

, data science,

portfolio theory Modern portfolio theory (MPT), or mean-variance analysis, is a mathematical framework for assembling a portfolio of assets such that the expected return is maximized for a given level of risk. It is a formalization and extension of diversificatio ...

, money and banking,

financial crises A financial crisis is any of a broad variety of situations in which some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, many financial crises were associated with banking panics, and man ...

, risk management,

information technologies Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

for finance,

public policy Public policy is an institutionalized proposal or a decided set of elements like laws, regulations, guidelines, and actions to solve or address relevant and real-world problems, guided by a conception and often implemented by programs. Public p ...

ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that "involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior".''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concer ...

in finance, and the Chinese

economic An economy is an area of the production, distribution and trade, as well as consumption of goods and services. In general, it is defined as a social domain that emphasize the practices, discourses, and material expressions associated with the ...

and

financial system A financial system is a system that allows the exchange of funds between financial market participants such as lenders, investors, and borrowers. Financial systems operate at national and global levels. Financial institutions consist of complex, ...

. Undergraduate students also have the opportunity to take part in the BCF's mentorship program, which connects students and

alumni Alumni (singular: alumnus (masculine) or alumna (feminine)) are former students of a school, college, or university who have either attended or graduated in some fashion from the institution. The feminine plural alumnae is sometimes used for grou ...

. Currently, around 90 students take part in the undergraduate certificate in finance program. While approximately two thirds of the students have an

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyzes ...

or finance background, many come from other areas including

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbrella term comprising past events as well ...

, mathematics, and

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...

Master in finance

The master in finance program particularly addresses students aiming at a career in

quantitative finance Mathematical finance, also known as quantitative finance and financial mathematics, is a field of applied mathematics, concerned with mathematical modeling of financial markets. In general, there exist two separate branches of finance that require ...

and asset management, risk management, FinTechs, macroeconomic and financial

forecasting Forecasting is the process of making predictions based on past and present data. Later these can be compared (resolved) against what happens. For example, a company might estimate their revenue in the next year, then compare it against the actual ...

, quantitative trading, or applied research. While the program generally takes four semesters, a two-semester version is available to students with strong prior knowledge. The BCF's Master in Finance puts strong emphasis on

financial economics Financial economics, also known as finance, is the branch of economics characterized by a "concentration on monetary activities", in which "money of one type or another is likely to appear on ''both sides'' of a trade". William F. Sharpe"Financia ...

, data analysis and technology, and computational methods. Due to the quantitative focus of the courses, the master program is also attractive for students with strong corresponding prior knowledge such as

physicist A physicist is a scientist who specializes in the field of physics, which encompasses the interactions of matter and energy at all length and time scales in the physical universe. Physicists generally are interested in the root or ultimate cau ...

s. Approximately 35 students corresponding to 5 percent of applicants are admitted to the program each year. The ''

New York Sun ''The New York Sun'' is an American online newspaper published in Manhattan; from 2002 to 2008 it was a daily newspaper distributed in New York City. It debuted on April 16, 2002, adopting the name, motto, and masthead of the earlier New York ...

'' describes the program as a popular alternative to an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

, particularly for students striving for a career in trading or

hedge fund A hedge fund is a pooled investment fund that trades in relatively liquid assets and is able to make extensive use of more complex trading, portfolio-construction, and risk management techniques in an attempt to improve performance, such as s ...

Ph.D. program

The BCF does not offer a distinct Ph.D. program, but provides a home for Ph.D. students in

, mathematics, and further fields who are interested in finance-related topics. In addition to supervision, the BCF offers courses on finance and related topics. The center also hosts a weekly student research workshop.

Seminars, lecture series, and conferences

In addition to the student research workshop, the BCF hosts a weekly finance seminar. The center organizes the "Princeton Finance Lectures" delivered by one outstanding finance scholar each year. In the past years, lectures were given by

Raghuram Rajan Raghuram Govind Rajan (born 3 February 1963) is an Indian economist and the Katherine Dusak Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Quote: "I am an Indian citizen. I have always b ...

, Jeremy Stein, Ben Bernanke, Andrei Shleifer,

Robert Shiller Robert James Shiller (born March 29, 1946) is an American economist, academic, and author. As of 2019, he serves as a Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a fellow at the Yale School of Management's International Center for ...

Robert Engle Robert Fry Engle III (born November 10, 1942) is an American economist and statistician. He won the 2003 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, sharing the award with Clive Granger, "for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-va ...

Robert C. Merton Robert Cox Merton (born July 31, 1944) is an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, especia ...

, and

Lars Peter Hansen Lars Peter Hansen (born 26 October 1952 in Urbana, Illinois) is an American economist. He is the David Rockefeller Distinguished Service Professor in Economics, Statistics, and the Booth School of Business, at the University of Chicago and a ...

. The BCF regularly hosts conferences. Past conferences dealt with topics such as escalating risks in China and

FinTech Fintech, a portmanteau of "financial technology", refers to firms using new technology to compete with traditional financial methods in the delivery of financial services. Artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, and big data are r ...

. Each year, the BCF co-organizes the "Princeton Initiative: Macro, Money and Finance", which brings together about 75 Ph.D. students from various universities to explore the latest research at the intersection between macro,

monetary Money is any item or verifiable record that is generally accepted as payment for goods and services and repayment of debts, such as taxes, in a particular country or socio-economic context. The primary functions which distinguish money are ...

, and

. In the center's career speaker series, guests from industry, government, and academia cover a broad range of topics, addressing both graduate and undergraduate students.

References

External links

Official website
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