Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Denis Gromb
INSEAD
Professor of Finance
To each his own. In the underground parking lot, I squeeze my old banger between a Porsche
and a SUV. Upstairs, same difference. Bernard, a finance theory star, is already in cruise control
behind his desk, his algorithms quietly converging. In the corridor, Pascal and Théo, macro‐
finance and corporate governance specialists, chat in Flemish about the trouble with the Euro,
at least that’s what they claim. Further down, Accounting Prof extraordinaire Stevie (Wonder)
M. is applying the transparency principles he preaches by being candidly, and dare I say
hilariously, grumpy about pretty much everything. He makes it look easy when it’s really
nothing but. No one has seen Massimo for a month but through his door, he can be heard
ranting in Italian, against a pesky database, no doubt. He is one of the most prolific researchers
on his planet. Cheeky game theorist Tim and laboring economist Amine are gracing our floor
with their presence. Or did they press the wrong button? Astrid is on cloud nine. After weeks of
guerrilla warfare, her general equilibrium model has finally laid down the arms. I for one am
more of a “coffee economist”: my best ideas were born from meandrous conversations, in front
of an expresso... Come to think of it, so as were my worst.
Babel
Fortunately, we have quite a gang of PhD students, all graduates of the very best universities,
all enormously gifted, and all thirsty for knowledge and coffee. The large office they are sharing
on our floor is a modern day Tower of Babel, just like INSEAD in fact: taken together,
Economics, Finance and Accounting boast some fifty professors and PhD students from twenty
countries and four continents (oddly, nobody from Down Under…): Brazil, China, France,
Germany, India, Serbia… and that’s not even counting colleagues from Decision Sciences,
Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Organizational Behavior, Strategy, Technology and Operations
Management, etc. It’s the United Nations, heated debates included. And obviously, English is de
rigueur. But our network is wider still. For a start, each of us has collaborators worldwide. Mine
are a Greek in London, a Swiss in Stockholm, an Indian in New York and a Milanese… in Milan.
Plus we are always on the move, hopping from conferences to seminars to discuss our work
with other globe trotters: Amsterdam, San Francisco, Beijing, London, New York, Hong Kong...
Bags I ideas and air miles.
Friday Snipers
Speaking of coffee, now it’s no longer a matter of life or death: It’s much more urgent! The
seminar kicks off in ten minutes so it’s all hands on deck. Every Friday, a different economist
from a major university spends the day here with us to present their research in progress.
Today, it’s a big cheese from Princeton and it should be fun: 90 minutes of carpet bombing with
questions to find out what his theory and statistics are truly made of. As for him, he will try to
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dodge the bullets and throw back grenades like there’s no tomorrow. Frankly, it’s pretty scary
at first, but incredibly useful. At the end of the day, we’ll understand his project better, and
he’ll get ideas on how to take it forward. And as in Asterix, it all ends with a good banquet
without songs. But we’re not there yet.
The Upper Crust
Scanning the seminar room, I see nothing but the upper crust, la crème de la crème. All bases
are covered: micro, macro, corporate finance, market finance, theory, empirics, behavioral
economics and finance... Here’s a tasting menu for you.
To my left, Joël investigates the relationship between the media and the stock market. For
these empirical studies, he has been named Best Young French Financial Economist. He has
shown that a firm’s media coverage can impact its stock price. Plausible as it may appear, this
fact is actually very difficult to quantify. Indeed, how is one to distinguish whether a newspaper
article, say, caused a drop in the stock price or whether it merely reported the underlying
causes of that drop? To identify the actual impact, Joël uses recently developed techniques of
automated textual analysis as well as so‐called “natural experiments” (in the case at hand,
newspaper strikes). He works with Lily, whose diminutive silhouette can be seen on a large TV
screen, together with several other colleagues based on our Singapore campus. All our
seminars are broadcast there live.
At the back of the room, near the radiator, young Spanish economist Ana studies the
connection between international trade and economic activity. Her most recent brain teaser?
Understanding why, during the financial crisis, international trade of goods and materials
collapsed so dramatically, much more than within‐country trade. A clue to the answer, she
thinks, is that exporting firms tend to rely much more than others on external finance (loans,
bond and stock issues, etc.). And it’s precisely the financial sector that was hit hardest during
the crisis. Watch this space…
On my right, as always, Théo is up in arms. As banks’ capitalization fell off a cliff, their debts
loomed enormous in comparison. To avoid mass bankruptcies and domino effects, the risk of
default of these towering debts was absorbed...by the taxpayer. Théo proposes that in the
future banks issue bonds that would be automatically converted into equity in the event of
financial distress. This solution would reduce the banks’ indebtedness while avoiding shotgun
negotiations in which the government is stuck between a Northern Rock and a hard place.
Several banks are apparently considering adopting his proposal.
By now the room has gone silent. Everyone is focused. The big cheese downs one last sip of
water. Let the games begin…
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