Increasingly, many central banks are thinking about the role of research in their overall strategy, revising their research policy to sharpen its focus and actively seeking ways to strengthen their research function. To the extent that being able to produce central bank research that also satisfies high academic quality requirements and publish that research in refereed international journals is an important element in central banks’ research policy, building and maintaining close and active relationships with academia seems increasingly critical. There are alternative ways of establishing and maintaining such relationships, ranging from joint research ventures and joint seminars and workshops to various forms of visiting scholar arrangements, including, of course, networking at the level of individual central bank staff members and academic researchers.
The Bank of Finland is no exception to this rule. The research policy at the Bank is centred around the aim of producing focused policy-relevant research that meets the academic requirements for high quality research. Furthermore, networking through interaction with academic researchers has always been an important element of the Bank’s research policy. This is reflected in the visitors’ programme that has been running ever since the Bank grasped the nettle and reformed the foundations of its research function almost fifteen years ago. Three external research evaluations, the most recent one published in December 2009, also bear witness to the importance of openness and academic influence on the Bank’s research.
As with the two previous evaluations, the most recent one provides the Bank with recommendations on how to improve its research function further. However, the Bank already decided in 2008 to further modify its research organization by introducing research fellow positions for established international academic researchers. In addition to conducting and publishing research on the core areas of the Bank’s research, research fellows are expected to contribute by helping staff members to interact and network with external academic researchers. Below, we introduce the Bank’s new research fellows and also the scientific advisors with whom the Bank has already enjoyed a long and fruitful relationship.
The Bank of Finland’s scientific advisor Iftekhar Hasan is Cary L. Wellington Professor of Finance at the Lally School of Management and Technology in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is also Director of the International Center for Financial Research, Co-Director of the Ph.D. Program and Area Coordinator of Accounting and Finance. Professor Hasan completed his MA studies at the University of Houston, from where he also obtained his PhD.Professor Hasan focuses his research on international banking issues, the economics of stock exchanges, privatizations in emerging markets, and new ventures. In addition to his research contributions to the field, Professor Hasan plays an active role in several research institutions in the United States and elsewhere. In addition to his role as a scientific advisor at the Central Bank of Finland in Helsinki, he is a research associate at the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies of the Stern School of Business in New York and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Georgia.
Professor Hasan has over 200 publications in print, including 120 academic journal articles in reputed finance, accounting and economics journals, such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial & Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Business, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of International Money and Finance, Journal of Money Credit and Banking, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial Intermediation and European Finance Review. He is a co-author of several books and edited volumes, including the widely-cited book Quantitative Methods for Finance and Investment. Professor Hasan serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals such as the Journal of Money Credit and Banking, the Journal of Banking and Finance and the Journal of International Money and Finance. He also serves as Managing Editor of the Journal of Financial Stability.
Martin Ellison, since mid-November 2009 the Bank’s research fellow in macroeconomic research, is Professor of Economics at the University of Oxford and Michael Cohen Fellow of Exeter College. Professor Ellison is a monetary macroeconomist interested in understanding situations where the central bank and private agents are not perfectly informed about each other’s actions nor certain about how the economy works. He has published on central bank learning and the learning of private agents in leading international journals such as the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking and Review of Economic Dynamics. More recently, in work with Professor Thomas Sargent from New York University, Professor Ellison is looking for evidence that the Federal Open Market Committee in the United States has been following policies that reflect doubts about how the economy works. Before taking up his position in Oxford he was Professor of Economics at the University of Warwick and a consultant at the Bank of England. Professor Ellison is fluent in Finnish and Italian after studies at the University of Oulu and obtaining a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence.
Finally, Timo Korkeamäki, the Bank’s research fellow in financial market research, is Aktia Professor of Finance at the Hanken School of Business in Helsinki. Professor Korkeamäki’s research interests are within empirical corporate finance. In his published papers, Professor Korkeamäki has studied the connection between security design and firms’ subsequent investment behaviour. He has also studied the area of law and finance, with particular focus on the valuation effects of law changes in Finland. Among his current research projects, he is studying the sensitivity of a firm’s stock returns to changes in interest rates and foreign exchange rates. He has published research in these areas in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Stability, Journal of Corporate Finance and Journal of International Economics and Finance. Before joining Hanken he was Assistant Professor of Finance as well as Associate Professor of Finance at the Gonzaga University (Spokane, WA), where he completed his MBA studies in 1996. Professor Korkeamäki obtained his PhD from the University of South Carolina (Columbia, SC) in 2001. He visited the Bank in 2007 as a visiting scholar.
Lally School of Management and Technology in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He is also Director of the International Center for Financial Research, Co-Director of the Ph.D. Program and Area Coordinator of Accounting and Finance. Professor Hasan completed his MA studies at the University of Houston, from where he also obtained his PhD.
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