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Miami Herbert Business School

PhD in Business

PhD in Business - Finance Concentration

The PhD program in finance is primarily concerned with such research areas as:

  1. The behavior of asset prices, e.g., stocks, bonds, options and real estate
  2. The financing of corporations, including the choice of investments and sources of funds
  3. Household finance and individual investor behavior
  4. Corporate governance and incentives of corporate executives and employees
  5. The management and regulation of banks and other financial intermediaries

The internationally recognized faculty members of the Miami Herbert Business School Department of Finance, as well as the university’s many research centers and programs, have created an environment in which PhD students develop new knowledge and disseminate it among the academic community and into business practice.

Admission to the PhD Program in Finance is normally accompanied with financial assistance to cover tuition, a stipend to cover living expenses, and some support for travel, data, or human subjects research.


Program Overview

Key Links

Curriculum and Structure

The PhD concentration in finance at the Miami Herbert Business School includes an integrated program of advanced study and research. Applicants should have an adequate academic background, personal maturity and be able to meet the program's much-more-than-average demand for initiative as well as scholarship.

Being a student in the finance PhD program means a commitment to full-time and in-residence study.

All students in the PhD in Business program complete a core curriculum. 

First Year

During the first year of the PhD program, students are required to take courses from the School of Business Administration's Department of Economics and Department of Finance as part of their PhD core course education. During the first year, there is limited flexibility in course selection to ensure that each student has a critical knowledge base in the areas of economics, econometrics and finance.

Second Year

During the second year, students continue to take courses in the School of Business, and also from other schools and departments at the University of Miami (e.g., Law, Psychology, Neuroscience) as part of their continued PhD course education, and depending on interests and specialization. The goals are to broaden a student’s knowledge beyond the core courses and deepen a student’s base knowledge, while introducing the student to the current research frontier.

Candidacy Stage

After successfully completing a qualifying finance exam in the first year, and an individual finance research paper in the second year, a PhD student is admitted into candidacy. At this stage of the PhD program, the student works full-time on a job market paper, which will showcase the student’s knowledge and skills related to finance scholarship, as well as the rest of the dissertation. This research is conducted under the supervision of an experienced advisor from the finance faculty. Co-authorship with faculty members and other students in the PhD program is common and strongly encouraged, in order to build up a PhD student’s portfolio of research papers.

Click here for the PhD in Business core curriculum.

Faculty Spotlights
Faculty Spotlight

Behavioral Finance

PhD student Carina Cuculiza talks about some of the Department of Finance faculty members who PhD students will work with in the program, and their particular expertise in behavioral finance.

World-Class Finance Faculty

Alok Kumar

Alok Kumar

Department Chair and Gabelli Asset Management Professor, Finance
Research Interests
Behavioral finance; empirical asset pricing; corporate finance; computational economics
Henrik Cronqvist

Henrik Cronqvist

Vice Dean, Faculty and Research, Bank of America Scholar, and Professor, Finance
Research Interests
Behavioral finance; Social finance; Corporate finance
Vidhi Chhaochharia

Vidhi Chhaochharia

Associate Professor, Finance
Research Interests
Corporate governance; and international finance
Andrea Heuson

Andrea Heuson

Professor, Finance
Research Interests
Mortgage and fixed income markets; bond pricing; and corporate and real estate valuation models
Thought Leadership
Thought Leadership

Miami Behavioral Finance Conference

Each year, the Miami Herbert Business School convenes the Miami Behavioral Finance Conference – one of the world’s most important annual conferences in the field. The conference draws the field’s most prominent thought leaders from world’s top business schools to exchange ideas on cutting edge research that helps explain why investors and stock markets behave the way they do. Conference speakers also include leaders in corporate finance.

More About the Conference

What Distinguishes our Finance PhD

Behavioral Finance

In recent years, the finance faculty at the University of Miami has created a strong profile in the area of behavioral finance, which emphasizes interdisciplinary scholarship, e.g., finance combined with psychology research. It is an important goal of the PhD program to train PhD students interested in this emerging research area. The department of finance organizes the Miami Behavioral Finance Conference each year, which attracts finance researchers from all around the world to present and discuss research in this area.

Finance Seminars

The finance faculty also organizes a weekly Finance Seminar Series with invited speakers from top research universities in the U.S. and around the world. In addition, the department organizes a Finance Brown Bag Seminar Series as a forum for presentations by its own faculty and PhD students.

Close Relationships with Faculty

The PhD program in finance at the University of Miami is small, with an average of only 2-3 admitted students per year, to ensure selectivity and the ability of the finance faculty to closely advise and mentor each of the students in the program on an individual basis.

Faculty Academic Journal and Association Involvement 

Department of Finance faculty frequently publish in top academic journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. They are also active on several journal editorial boards, serving as editors, associate editors, advisory editors and editorial board members. In addition, the finance faculty members have served on the boards of several prominent professional associations, including the Financial Management Association and the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

Learn more about the Department of Finance at the Miami Herbert Business School.

Contact Us

You can find detailed application information and admissions requirements here.

For more information about the PhD Finance Concentration, please contact Gennaro Bernile, professor of finance and the program coordinator.

Download Policies and Procedures for the PhD in Business - Finance Concentration program at the University of Miami.

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