Summer School Report
Introduction:
The Financial Research and Trading Laboratory (Finance Lab) hosted the first Summer School in Empirical
Finance and Accounting Research in the during May 1-9, 2015. The primary objective of the summer school is
to help improve the quality of research in empirical finance and accounting in India. It is designed to walk
through ten classic papers published in top journals to understand the 'the art of writing' high quality papers
and in the process learn some solid research methods.
The format of the summer school was more towards 'learning by doing' with speakers mainly acting
as facilitators. The objective was that at the end of the nine-day summer school, there are ten papers ready at
the initial draft stage with pilot results. The objective was achieved through lectures, presentations, project
work, plenary discussions, and software access. The topics covered were Investments, Market Microstructure,
Asset Pricing, Earnings Quality and Capital Structure. Forty participant attended the Summer School 2015.
Seventy percent of the participants are faculty members in various Management Schools in India, including IIMs
and IITs.
Faculty Guides:
The teaching faculty includes eminent academicians like Prof. Vikas Agarwal (Professor of Finance at Georgia
State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business), Prof. Sugata Ray (Assistant Professor of Finance at the
University of Florida), Prof. Ashok Banerjee (Professor in Finance and Control group, IIM Calcutta), Prof. Manju
Jaiswall (Assistant Professor in Finance and Control group, IIM Calcutta), Prof. Vivek Rajvanshi (Assistant
Professor in Finance & Control group at IIM Calcutta) and Prof. Sahadeb Sarkar (Professor in the Operations
Management group, IIM Calcutta).
Student Facilitator:
Each participating team was provided with a student facilitator. The role of a student facilitator is to help
participants have hands-on knowledge of statistical packages (e.g., STATA, SAS) and also to provide support in
accessing relevant date. The student facilitators were doctoral students of IIM Calcutta namely Abhilash Bobbur
Chowdhury, Ahana Bose, Anirban Banerjee, Ankur Mehra, Debarati Basu, Kamran Quddus and Samarpan Nawn.
The Programme:
The director of IIM Calcutta Prof. Saibal Chattopadhyay, Prof. Rohit Varman (Professor in the marketing group,
IIM Calcutta) and Prof. Ashok Banerjee (faculty-in-charge, Finance Lab) formally inaugurated the summer school.
Prof. Chattopadhyay opened the session by welcoming the participants. He called on participants to participate
fully and actively in the summer school so as to derive the maximum benefit from it and realize the objectives.
Prof. Rohit Varman and Prof. Ashok Banerjee - the summer school coordinator, also took turns to address the
participants. The participants were allowed to introduce themselves and state their expectations from the
summer school. Prof. Vikas Agarwal and Prof. Sugata Ray took over the session and presented papers. A software
session on STATA was then carried out by the students.
Day 2 began with presentation on database in Finance Lab and its access. The speakers joined the session post
tea break to discuss the formation of groups/teams. Teams were finalized in the post lunch session and each
faculty member along with the student facilitator discussed their project.
Day 3 and 4 was the day of interim presentations and paper presentations by the faculty guides respectively.
Apart from the lecture sessions, there were sessions for project discussions and group and individual exercises.
The focus on the morning of Day 5 was discussing project work facilitated by the students and mentors. The
session then continued with Prof. Sahadeb Sarkar presenting on “ARIMA Models” and mainly on R-software.
Following Prof. Vivek Rajvanshi’s presentations on Day 6, there was a session on SAS-software and STATA by the
students. Day 7 again was the day of interim presentations by the teams followed by a special session on Rsoftware.
Day 8 and 9 were reserved for presentation by all teams. Each team is told to update respective faculty guide
on a fortnightly basis on the progress of the research project. Certificates of participation were then awarded
to each of the participants by Prof. Ashok Banerjee and Prof. Vivek Rajvanshi.
Deliverables:
All groups (excepting the one member group having proprietary data) have collected required data and made
presentation on last two days. A total of 14 research proposals were presented and discussed. It was felt that
participants could show substantial progress in research proposals in just nine days. The proposal presentations
also included results of pilot study. The Finance Lab has provided necessary data to all participants. All
participants need to submit their research papers in India Finance Conference 2015. The teams are also
requested to complete their project by September 2015 and submit the papers for publication to leading Indian
journals.
Closing session:
The key issues of the summer school were summarized and the summer school was closed on May 9, 2015 with
concluding remarks from Prof. Ashok Banerjee, the summer school coordinator. The participants were asked to
give feedback in terms of relevance and effectiveness of delivery as well as meeting their objectives and
expectations. The participants’ response indicated that the summer school objectives were very much achieved.
All the participants found the sessions very useful and of high quality and indicated that the overall course was
well designed. A summary of what the participants liked about the Summer School is as follows:
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The teaching methodologies.
Facilitation, which was good and interesting.
The interaction among participants.
The knowledge and skills acquired.
Contributions from student facilitators.
The linkage between the objectives of the summer school and the task for participants.
Participants have also given the following suggestions:
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Groups may be formed even before coming with the topics they are supposed to work on
Encourage more group work
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Each team should ideally get similar time preparation
Pre-requisites for the programme should be clearly mentioned.
Conclusion:
The evaluation of the participants indicated that the Summer School was successful. To a large extent the
objectives of the course and expectations of participants were met. The experiences, skills, knowledge and
interactive mode of presentation made facilitation friendly and lively. Most of the participants were of the view
that the course was very relevant to their work.
Finally in the concluding session, everybody said that the effort was unique and requires to be continued. Hence,
we will hold this workshop next year as well.