2025 Awards

• First Place – Shikun (Barry) Ke, Yale School of Management –  “Analysts’ Belief Formation in Their Own Words”
• Second Place – Byungwook Kim, University of California, Irvine –  “Do Share Repurchases Increase the Value of Non-repurchasing Firms?”
• Third Place – Anna Helmke, Vanderbilt University – “Will ETFs Drive Mutual Funds Extinct?”

2024 Awards

• First Place – Leland Bybee, University of Chicago – “The Ghost in the Machine: Generating Beliefs with Large Language Models”
• Second Place – Norman Guo, St. Louis University – “Can Machines Understand Human Skills? Insights from Analyst Selection”
• Third Place – Dat Mai, University of Missouri – “StockGPT: A GenAI Model for Stock Prediction and Trading”

2023 Awards

• First Place – Nikolas Vasilas, Lancaster University – “Power Sorting”
• Second Place – Mihail Velikov, Pennsylvania State University – “Assaying Anomalies”
• Third Place – Xiaofei Zhao, Georgetown University – “Labor Market Networks, Fundamentals, and Stock Returns”

2022 Awards

• First Place – Stephan Heller, Harvard Business School – “Hidden Alpha”
• Second Place – Cameron Peng, London School of Economics – “Factor Demand and Factor Returns”
• Third Place – Yuan Tian, University of Cincinnati – “Expected Growth and Stock Returns: A Machine Learning Approach”

2021 Awards

• First Place – William Mullins, University of California – San Diego – “Echo Chambers”
• Second Place – Dat Mai, University of Missouri – “Economic Narratives and Market Outcomes: A Semi-Supervised Topic Modeling Approach”
• Third Place – Tengjia Shu, University of Iowa – “Identifying Signals of the Cross Section of Stock Returns”

2019 Awards

• First Place – Johnathan Loudis, University at Notre Dame – “Expectations in the Cross Section: Stock Price Reactions to the Information and Bias in Analyst-Expected Returns”
• Second Place – Xi Wu, University of Rochester – “Labor Links and Shock Transmissions”
• Third Place – Ai He, University of South Carolina – “More Factors are Needed: Evidence from a Simple Test”

2018 Awards

• First Place – Mamdouh Medhat, Cass Business School (London) – “Short Term Momentum”
• Second Place – Quan Wen, Georgetown University – “Crowdsourced Employer Reviews and Stock Returns”
• Third Place – Dacheng Xiu, University of Chicago – “Empirical Asset Pricing Via Machine Learning”

2017 Awards

• First Place – Kevin Mullaly, University of Alabama – “Prime (Information) Brokerage”
• Second Place – Chen Xue, University of Cincinnati – “Replicating Anomalies”
• Third Place – Xintong Zhan, Erasmus University of Rotterdam – “How Do Smart Beta ETF’s Affect the Asset Management Industry? Evidence from Mutual Fund Flows”

2016 Awards

• First Place – Quoc Nguyen, University of Illinois at Chicago – “Lazy Prices”
• Second Place – Jongsub Lee, University of Florida – “Related Securities and the Cross-Section of Stock Return Momentum: Evidence From Credit Default Swaps”
• Third Place – Linghang Zeng, Georgia Tech – “Does History Repeat Itself? Business Cycle and Industry Returns”

European Finance Association Doctoral Tutorial Winner – Sehoon Kim, Ohio State University – “Cash, Financial Flexibility, and Product Prices: Evidence from a Natural Experiment in the Airline Industry”

2015 Awards

• First Place – Joseph Gerakos, Tuck School of Business – “Accruals, Cash Flows and Operating Profitability in the Cross-Section of Stock Returns”
• Second Place – Kewei Hou, Ohio State University – “A Comparison of New Factor Models”
• Third Place – Denys Glushkov, University of Pennsylvania – “How Smart are Smart Beta ETF’s? Analysis of Relative Performance and Factor Timing”

European Finance Association Doctoral Tutorial Winner – Elisabeth Kempf, Tilburg University – “The Job Rating Game: The Effects of Revolving Doors on Analyst Incentives”

2014 Awards

• First Place – Li An, Tsinghua University – “Asset Pricing When Traders Sell Extreme Winners and Losers”
• Second Place – Jiasun Li, UCLA – “Slow Price Adjustment to Public News in After-hours Trading”
• Third Place – Huijun Wang, University of Delaware – “Prospect Theory and the Risk = Return Trade Off”

European Finance Association Doctoral Tutorial Winner – Vincent Bogousslavsky, EPFL, Swiss Finance Institute – “Infrequent Rebalancing and Short-term Return Predictability”

2013 Awards

• First Place – Qingzhong Ma, Cornell University – “Momentum and Insider Trading”
• Second Place – Andrea Yinjia Lu, Northwestern University – “Slow Diffusion of Information and Price Momentum in Stocks: Evidence from Options Markets”
• Third Place – Jerimiah Green, Penn State – “The Remarkable Multidimensionality in the Cross-Section of Expected U.S. Stock Returns”

2012 Awards

• First Place – Jianfeng Yu, University of Minnesota – “Investor Sentiment and Economic Forces”
• Second Place – Joseph Gerakos, University of Chicago – “Decomposing Value”
• Third Place – Jake Thornock, University of Washington – “The Informativeness of Stale Financial Disclosures”

2011 Awards

• First Place – Nitish Ranjan Sinha, University of Illinois at Chicago – “Under Reaction to News in the U.S. Stock Market”
• Tied for Second Place – Buhui Qiu, Erasmus University – “Options-Implied Variance and Future Stock Returns”
• Tied for Second Place – Sandhya Vallapuzha, Georgia State University – “Agency Problems in Target-Date Funds”

2010 Awards

• First Place – Lukasz Pomorski, University of Toronto – “Decoding Inside Information”
• Second Place – Ankur Pareek, Rutgers University – “Institutional Investors’ Investment Durations and Stock Return Anomalies: Momentum, Reversal, Accruals, Share Issuance and R&D Increases”
• Third Place – Yuehua Tang, Georgia State University – “Do Institutional Investors Have an Ace Up Their Sleeves? Evidence from Confidential Filings of Portfolio Holdings”

2009 Awards

• First Place – Zhi Da, Notre Dame – “In Search of Attention”
• Second Place – Jeffrey Ng, MIT – “Market Pricing of Banks’ Fair Value Assets Reported under SFAS 157 During the 2008 Financial Crisis”
• Third Place – Hao Zhou, Federal Reserve Board – “Variance Risk Premia Asset Predictability Puzzles”

2008 Awards

• First Place – Itzhak Ben-David, Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University – “Manipulation of Collateral Values by Borrowers and Intermediaries”
• Second Place – Usman Ali, Yale University – “Analysts’ Use of Public Information and Profitability of their Recommendation Revisions”
• Third Place – Buhui Qiu, University of Cincinnati – “The Return Predictive Power of Institutional Ownership”

2007 Awards

• First Place – David McLean, University of Alberta – “Costly Arbitrage and Idiosyncratic Risk: Evidence from Short Sellers”
• Second Place – Wei Jiang, Columbia Business School – “Hedge Fund Activism, Corporate Governance, and Firm Performance”
• Third Place – Sonya Lim, DePaul University – “Driven to Distraction: Extraneous News and Underreaction to Earnings News”

2006 Awards

• First Place – Lauren Cohen, Yale University – “Economic Links and Predictable Returns”
• Second Place – Feng Li, University of Michigan – “Do Stock Market Investors Understand the Risk Sentiment of Corporate Annual Reports”
• Third Place – Steven Heston, University of Maryland – “Seasonality in the Cross-Section of Stock Returns”

2005 Awards

• First Place – Weili Ge, University of Michigan – “Off-Balance-Sheet Activities Earnings Persistence and Stock Prices: Evidence From Operation Leases”
• Second Place – Gergana Jostova, George Washington University – “Momentum and Credit Rating”
• Third Place – Karl Diether, Ohio State University – “Supply and Demand Shifts in the Shorting Markets”

2004 Awards

• First Place – Andrea Frazzini, Yale University – “The Disposition Effect and Under-reaction to News”
• Second Place – Zoran Ivkovich, University of Illinois – “Portfolio Concentration and Performance of Individual Investors”
• Third Place – Cheol Eun, Georgia Tech University – “International Diversification with Large- and Small-Cap Stocks”

2003 Awards

• First Place – Allen Poteshman, University of Illinois – “The Information in Option Volume for Future Stock Prices”
• Second Place – Malcolm Baker, Harvard Business School – “Investor Sentiment and the Cross-Section of Stock Returns”
• Third Place – Doron Avramov, University of Maryland – “Stock Returns are Predictable: A Firm Level Analysis”

2002 Awards

• First Place – Christo Pirinsky, Texas A&M University – “Time-Series Versus Cross-Sectional Momentum: What’s the Difference?”
• Second Place – David Ng, Cornell University – “Corruption and International Valuation: Does Virtue Pay?”
• Third Place – Xi Li, University of Miami – “Will Past Leaders Still Lead? Performance Persistence of Financial Analysts”

2000 Awards

• First Place – Sundaresh Ramnath, Rice University – “Under-reaction to Self-Selected News Events: The Case of Stock Splits”
• Second Place – Charles Jones, Columbia University – “A Century of Stock Market Liquidity and Trading Costs”
• Third Place – Hsui-Lang Chen, University of Illinois – Chicago – “On Characteristics Momentum”

1999 Awards

• First Place – David Robinson, University of Chicago – “Industry Concentration and Industry Average Returns”
• Second Place – Richard Warr, Kansas State University – “The Decline of Inflation and the Bull Market of 1982-1997”
• Third Place – Christopher Geczy, University of Pennsylvania – “Is the Abnormal Return Following Equity Issuances Anomalous?”

1998 Awards

• First Place – Bhaskran Swaminathan, Cornell University – “Price Momentum and Trading Volume”
• Tied for Second Place – Richard Sloan, University of Michigan – “Using Cash Flow Data for New Insight into Form Earnings Performance”
• Tied for Second Place – Douglas Skinner, University of Michigan – “Earnings Surprises, Growth Expectations, and Stock Returns or Don’t Let an Earnings Torpedo Sink Your Portfolio”

1997 Awards

• First Place – John Nofsinger, Marquette University – “Herding by Institutional and Individual Investors”
• Second Place – Christopher Polk, University of Chicago – “Financial Constraints and Stock Returns”
• Third Place – Albert Wang, Columbia University – “Overconfidence, Delegated Fund Management, and Survival”