The Graduate School of Management continued its partnership with the Financial Management Association International to co-host the Ninth Annual Napa Conference on Financial Markets Research from April 20 & 21, at the Cakebread Winery in Napa Valley.

Thirty top scholars—from Rice University, New York University, Northwestern University, University of Michigan and other leading institutions—discussed subjects ranging from the effects risk taking has on financial conglomerates and the financial crisis of 2008 to how journalists impact asset prices.

“We had about 145 applications from both national and international scholars,” explained Professor Brad Barber, who co-chaired the conference.

Associate Professor Joe Chen and William G. Christy, editor of the journal Financial Management, served as co-chairs and oversaw the highly competitive review of paper submissions. “The acceptance rate was five percent, and the process involved 37 reviewers in total, with each paper read by two reviewers,” explained Chen.

Two studies shared the top paper award. The first, “Journalists, Persuasion, and Asset Prices” by Casey Dougal, Joseph Engleberg, Diego Garcia and Christopher A. Parsons, all from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, shows that a small set of financial columnists have a causal effect on short-term aggregate market returns.

The second paper, “Who Writes the News? Corporate Press Releases During Merger Negotiations,” by Kenneth Ahern and Denis Sosyura, both from the University of Michigan, explores whether firms have an incentive to manage media coverage to influence the outcome of important corporate events.