Nikunj Kapadia, PhD
Professor | Department Chair
Nikunj Kapadia is professor and department chair of finance at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He holds a PhD in finance from the Stern School of Business, New York University. Previously, he served as associate dean of graduate programs at Isenberg.
His research interests include credit and equity derivatives. He is the recipient of the College Outstanding Teaching Award, College Researcher of the Year awards, and the Best Paper Award from the Western Finance Association. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Derivatives. Previously, he was the co-editor in chief of the Journal of Credit Risk.
Prior to joining the University of Massachusetts, he was with Bear Stearns, New York. He has served as a visiting researcher at the Office of Financial Research of the United States Treasury, and a fellow of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
Education
Professional Experience
Academic Appointments
Recent Honors / Awards
Research Interests
Teaching Interests
- FIN 422 Financial Engineering
- FIN 405 International Finance
- SCH-MGMT 681 Derivatives Strategies and Risk Management
- Options
Media, Industry, and Public Impact
Talking Points AM, Larry Edelman, Boston Globe, 2/7/2019, https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2019/02/07/slack-going-public-without-raising-dime-what-gives/XcQY7BVyx4I1KuYr4rw30N/story.html
Guest on on podcast on “Volatility Views”, Option Insider Ratio Network, 1/23/2012
“Buy-Write Strategy Beats Buy and Hold,” Steven M. Sears, Barron’s, September 2011
Selected Working Papers / Current Research
Kapadia, N., A. Koticha, and Saurabh Roy, 2026, “Do Balance Sheet Constraints Affect the Pricing of Off-Balance Sheet Derivatives? Evidence from the Swaption Market,” Working paper.
Selected Publications
Hasan, Mohammad, Kapadia, Nikunj, and Akhtar Siddique, 2017, “Issuer Bias in Corporate Ratings towards Financially Constrained Firms,” Journal of Credit Risk 13(4) (December) pp. 1-35.
Lead article
George Bissas, Brian Levine, and Nikunj Kapadia, 2017, “Market-based Security for Distributed Applications.” In Proc. of the ACM Workshop on New Security Paradigms, 19-34 (October). doi: 10.1145/3171533.3171541
Kapadia, Nikunj and Xiaoling Pu, 2012, “Limited Arbitrage Between Equity and Credit markets,” Journal of Financial Economics, 105 (3), 542-564.
Das, Sanjiv, Darrell Duffie, Nikunj Kapadia, and Leandro Saita, 2007, “Common Failings: How corporate defaults are correlated,” Journal of Finance 62(1), 93-118.
Best Paper prize at the Western Finance Association.
Reprinted in: The Foundations of Credit Risk Analysis, Eds. Willi Semler and Lucas Bernard, MA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007.
Bakshi, Gurdip and Nikunj Kapadia, 2003, “Delta-Hedged Gains and the Negative Market Volatility Risk Premium,” Review of Financial Studies, Volume 16 (2), 527-566.
Bakshi, Gurdip, Nikunj Kapadia and Dilip Madan, 2003, “Stock Return Characteristics, Skew Laws, and the Differential Pricing of Individual Equity Options,” Review of Financial Studies, Volume 16 (1), 101-143.