Isenberg Hosts Inaugural Finance Conference at UMass Amherst

The Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst welcomed approximately 100 registrants to its inaugural Finance Conference May 9, 2025. Hosted by the Department of Finance, the event brought together leading academics and professionals from an array of institutions to engage in discussions on critical financial topics, including corporate governance, the debt ceiling, and market forecasting.

“Isenberg is proud to be a hub for thought leadership in finance,” said Fousseni Chabi-Yo, the Berthiaume Endowed Professor of Business Administration, chair of the Finance Department, and the event’s organizer. “This inaugural conference showcased the strength of our faculty’s research and demonstrated our capacity to convene top experts from premier business schools around the world to address pressing issues facing academia, industry, financial markets, and the global economy.”

The conference is expected to become an annual event, building on the success of this year’s program to further promote collaboration and innovation within the finance research community, according to Chabi-Yo.

The keynote address—“The Virtue of Complexity”—was delivered by Bryan Kelly, the Frederick Frank ’54 and Mary C. Tanner Professor of Finance at Yale University’s School of Management (SOM), head of machine learning at AQR Capital Management, Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and associate director of Yale SOM’s International Center for Finance.

In addition to the keynote, attendees participated in three research sessions, featuring seven academic papers presented by scholars from institutions including Yale SOM, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University, and the Federal Reserve.

The sessions were:

• Corporate Governance and Financial Policy—chaired by Anya Mkrtchyan, associate professor of finance and Judith Wilkinson O’Connell Faculty Fellow
• Market Disruptions and Macroeconomic Events—chaired by Bing Liang, professor of finance and Charles P. McQuaid Endowed Professor of Finance.
• Portfolio Management and Investor Beliefs—chaired by Fousseni Chabi-Yo, the Berthiaume Endowed Professor of Business Administration and professor of finance, who is also co-director of the Finance Department’s PhD Program.

“This conference was established to foster meaningful dialogue around the evolving challenges in global finance,” said Professor Chabi-Yo. “By bringing together distinguished scholars and industry leaders, we aim to generate fresh insights and contribute to the development of actionable, research-driven solutions.”