Rotman School of Management | PhD Program

Rotman PhD Program

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Admission to the Program

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Major Programs of Study

Operations Management

Strategic Management

Job Market Candidates

Finance

Introduction
Strengths of the Program
Admission to the Program
PhD Courses
Program Structure and Requirements
Current Students
Faculty and Research Interests
Graduates

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Introduction

Rotman Finance offers top-tier training from some of the world’s leading experts in fields such as futures and options, corporate finance, investments and mathematical finance. Over the past several years running, the Rotman Finance Area has been ranked in the Top Ten worldwide by the Financial Times in its annual ranking of the world’s best business education programs. In its 2009 ranking, FT ranked the Rotman Doctoral Program 19th in the world, ahead of such top-tier schools as Yale, Oxford and INSEAD.

The mission of the PhD Program in Finance at the Rotman School is to train prospective scholars to become highly skilled and innovative researchers and teachers, and to prepare them for careers as faculty members at premier academic institutions throughout the world.

The program can be completed in four to five years, depending upon prior training and student progress. Successful progress through this demanding program requires that students develop mastery in a variety of disciplines demonstrated through successful completion of courses and exams (pre-qualifying requirements, minor field requirements and qualifying courses, required and elective finance courses), demonstrate skills in original research (second year paper and dissertation), as well as a variety of other tasks.

Contact the PhD Program at Rotman

Contact the Finance PhD advisor Kevin Wang

Full funding for all PhD students through a financial aid package that fully covers tuition and provides an attractive stipend that can continue for up to five years in the program.
• Location: the Rotman School is in the heart of North America’s third-largest financial centre, just blocks from the heart of Canada’s business community.
• A faculty roster that boasts some of today’s top finance thought leaders, including Professor John Hull, whose books on options futures and derivatives are widely used in trading rooms and business schools around the world.
• World-class research capabilities such as the Financial Research and Trading Lab; the Capital Markets Institute; the Clarkson Centre for Business Ethics and Board Effectiveness; the International Centre for Pension Fund Management; and the Centre for Jurisdictional Advantage & Prosperity.

Admission to the Program

Strengths of the Program

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Who are we Looking for?

Accomplished graduate students with a Masters Degree in Economics, Finance, quantitative methods or related fields;

Outstanding undergraduates: we admit a select few outstanding undergraduates with a strong background in Economics, Finance, quantitative methods or related fields directly into the PhD Program;

Transfers from PhD programs in Economics and Related Fields: Students who have done extremely well in their first or second year of their PhD Program who are interested in transferring to Finance.

Admission is highly competitive: we only admit two-to-five students each year. Successful applicants in the past have demonstrated their excellence through outstanding undergraduate grades, top scores on GMAT/GRE, excellent quantitative skills and other indications of an interest and ability to achieve excellence in research on Finance-related topics. Finance PhD students join a broader graduate-student community that includes more than 20 new admits each year in Economics and a current cohort of 65 Rotman PhD students in eight academic areas (which grows by 20 per year.)

Before being offered admission, selected students will be interviewed via video conference/telephone and may be invited to visit the campus. The program can be completed in four to five years, depending upon prior training and student progress.

Find out more about Admission to the PhD Program

PhD Courses

RSM 3030 Financial Theory I

This course covers capital market theory under certainty, risk, the expected utility hypothesis and time-state preference and capital and pricing models of security valuation. These models will be used to examine questions of portfolio formation, security selection and the notion of efficiency in financial markets. The emphasis is on statistic, single period models.

View Course Syllabus

RSM 3031 Financial Theory II

This course extends 3030 to include an analysis of arbitrage-free financial markets and continuous time models of security valuation. Option pricing models and multi-period valuation models will be analyzed in detail together with a discussion of agency problems in finance.

RSM 3032 Empirical Methods in Finance

This course develops an understanding of the econometric problems frequently encountered in testing the propositions of financial theory. The testing of asset pricing models, the event study methodology, the distribution of returns, the multivariate regression model and the power of different statistical tests will be developed in detail.
View Course Syllabus

RSM 3033 Corporate FinanceThis course reviews current and academic research in corporate finance. It covers both theory and empirical tests of the theoretical models.

View Course Syllabus

RSM 3034 Topics in Empirical Finance

This course is designed to provide hands-on experience applying empirical finance methods to topical finance questions. The application exercises will culminate in the production of a short research paper on a related empirical finance topic. Particular emphasis will be placed on modeling time-varying volatility and co-variability of security returns, since these conditional moments are important inputs to pricing, dynamic investment strategies, risk management, etc. Both linear and non-linear methods of measuring and forecasting the series of interest will be reviewed.

RSM 3090 - Advanced Corporate Finance

Until recently corporate finance was a field detached from the rest of economic discourse. Fortunately, this state of affairs is changing. In this course, students will be exposed to research and researchers that are exploring the strong interrelations between corporate finance and other economic subfields: growth, political economy, theory of the firm, economics of the media, and Behavioural finance. We are very fortunate to include as lecturers in this course Professors Zingales and Morck, whose work is pushing forward the frontier.

View Course Syllabus

Program Structure and Requirements

Program Structure

Required Courses

Year 1:
Fall	Spring	Summer
Math-Stat Review (Aug)
PhD Microeconomics I	PhD Microeconomics II	Micro Comprehensive
PhD Econometrics I	PhD Econometrics II	Residency required
PhD Macroeconomics I	PhD Corporate Finance
Finance Workshop	Finance Workshop
Year 2:
Fall	Spring	Summer
PhD Finance Theory	Special Topics I	Finance Comp -Paper
PhD Empirical Methods	Special Topics II	Residency required
Elective Course	Elective Course
Research Methods	Research Methods
Finance Workshop	Finance Workshop

•Finance workshop is required for year 3 and beyond.
•You are expected to become RAs and/or TAs after passing the Micro Comp. You are not encouraged to do RA/TA work before the Micro Comp.
•As soon as you pass the Micro Comp exam, you are expected to start working on the second-year paper for the Finance Comp.
•Both the Micro Comp and the Finance Comp are important tests that you must pass.
•To be exempt from any of the courses specified above, you need to get permission from the finance area PhD coordinator.
•The five economics PhD courses are “required minor”courses. The “required major”courses arethe finance PhD courses.
•Course grades of A- are considered to be normal performances.

Other Requirements

Comprehensive Examination

The Comprehensive Examination is normally taken after the completion of the first two years of PhD studies. It is assumed that by this time the student has completed all (or nearly all) of the course requirements and has participated in some research projects.

The main purpose of the examination is to assess whether the student has attained sufficient general knowledge of key topics and tools in the Finance Area and is ready to begin independent research work. The student is expected to exhibit an in-depth understanding and mastery of the major analytical tools necessary for successful research in Finance.

The questions are based on some of the courses listed in the PhD calendar, particularly the four ‘core’ PhD courses offered by the Area during the student’s first two years in the program. The questions may also be based on other general topics in the areas mentioned above and on textual references provided separately (please contact the Program Coordinator).

The format of the examination is: four-hour written, open-book exam. The students will be allowed to bring in up to five books of their choice and any personal notes. Copies of the exams from previous years may be obtained from the Program Coordinator.

The questions for the examination are contributed by the members of the examination committee, normally consisting of the PhD Coordinator for the Area, as well as several faculty members involved in the program. The same committee will evaluate each student's performance on the examination. The results of the examination will be reported back to the student within several weeks of the examination, along with the committee's general assessment of the student's progress in the program.

Successful passing of the Comprehensive Examination is a necessary requirement for the advancement to the thesis research portion of the program. The possible examination results are:

Unconditional Pass

Conditional Pass: The letter describing your results will specify the additional conditions you must fulfill (typically consisting of additional courses to be taken); the conditions must usually be fulfilled within one year.

Fail with Invitation to Retake: If your performance on the exam was below the passing threshold, but, in the opinion of the committee, your performance in other aspects of the program to date has been sufficiently strong, you may be invited to retake the examination. The examination can usually be retaken in the following summer (with next year's class). Please note that the examination can be taken a maximum of two times – the second failure automatically signals that the student must withdraw from the program. During the post-exam meeting, the committee will recommend the additional steps you should take to increase your chances of success on the second attempt.

Fail without Invitation to Retake: In the opinion of the committee, your performance on the exam and other aspects of the program to date indicate that the chances for the successful retake of the exam are minimal. Students receiving this mark are expected to withdraw from the program

Dissertation

Program Timeline

Student Performance Reviews

Current Students

Faculty and Research Interests

Area Coordinator

Alan White

Peter L. Mitchelson/SIT Investment Associates Foundation Chair in Investment Strategy and Professor of Finance

Phone: 416-978-3689

E-mail: Awhite@rotman.utoronto.ca

PhD Coordinator

Peter Christoffersen

Professor of Finance
Phone: 416-946-5511
E-mail: Peter.Christoffersen@rotman.utoronto.ca

Full-Time Faculty

Faculty by Focus

Corporate Finance

Topics include: Acquisitions and Mergers, Capital Budgeting, Corporate Governance, Cost of Capital, Agency Theory, Law and Economics.
Faculty involved in research in these areas: Varouj Aivazian, Laurence Booth, Craig Doidge, Alexander Dyck, David Goldreich, Paul Halpern, Jan Mahrt-Smith, Wendy Rotenberg.

Derivatives and Financial Risk Management

Topics include: Valuation of Derivatives Securities, Financial Risk Management, Risk and Insurance, Regulation.
Faculty involved in research in these areas: Sergei Davydenko, John Hull, Alexandra MacKay, Jason Wei, Alan White.

Investments

Topics include: Investments, Mortgages, Pensions, and Personal Finance, Testing Asset Pricing Models.
Faculty involved in research in these areas: Paul Halpern, Raymond Kan, Eric Kirzner, Lisa Kramer, Tom McCurdy, Kevin Wang, Jason Wei, Alan White.

International and Capital Markets

Topics include: Capital Markets, International Finance, Public Sector Finance and Regulation.
Faculty involved in research in these areas: Varouj Aivazian, Laurence Booth, Donald Brean, Craig Doidge, Alexander Dyck, Paul Halpern, Eric Kirzner, Jan Mahrt-Smith, MacKay, Wendy Rotenberg, Jason Wei.

Graduates

Recent Graduates

Melanie Cao (PhD ‘97) Associate Professor of Finance, Schulich School of Business, York University

Sean Cleary (PhD ’98), Professor and Bank of Montreal Professor of Finance, Queen’s School of Business

Ambrus Kecskes (PhD ‘08) Assistant Professor of Finance, Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Tech

Fatma Sonmez (PhD ’09) Assistant Professor of Finance, Queen's School of Business

Graduate Q&A

Click here to read a Graduate Q&A with Long Chen (PhD in Finance, 2001) Associate Professor of Finance, Olin School of Business, Washington University

Click here to read more Q&As with recent graduates.