Dear Colleagues,
it is my pleasure to invite you to the following two seminars in Quantitative Finance, organised by LTI@UniTO (www.carloalberto.org/lti) and Collegio Carlo Alberto (CCA):
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March 7th @ 12.00 (webinar) Speaker: Dimitri Vayanos (LSE) Title: Passive Investing and the Rise of Mega-Firms
Abstract: We study how passive investing affects asset prices. Flows into passive funds raise dispropor-tionately the stock prices of the economy’s largest firms—even when the indices tracked by the funds include all firms. Passive flows also raise the largest firms’ return volatility the most, andraise the aggregate stock market even when they are entirely due to investors switching from active to passive. These effects arise because of the re-pricing of systematic and large firms’idiosyncratic risk. We estimate that passive investing caused the 50 largest US firms to rise 30%more than the US stock market over 1996–2020.
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85025027662?pwd=ajU0NjU3MGZRMitQTkZRT0ZjR0F5UT09
Event webpage link: https://www.carloalberto.org/event/dimitri-vayanos-london-school-of-economic... -----------------------------------------------
March 8th @ 12.00 (hybrid seminar) Speaker: Johan Hombert (HEC Paris) Title: Innovation Booms, Easy Financing, and Human Capital Accumulation
Abstract: Innovation booms occur frequently and are often fueled by easy financing that allows new technology firms to pay high wages that attracts skilled labor. Using the late 1990s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) boom as a laboratory, we show that skilled labor joining this new sector experienced sizeable long-term earnings losses. We trace these losses to skill obsolescence, that cannot be explained by either selection or the subsequent ICT sector bust. During the boom, capital flowed more to firms whose workers would ultimately experience a larger productivity decline. This suggests that financial capital can amplify the negative effects of labor reallocation into booming sectors on aggregate labor productivity.
Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89743168691?pwd=bU1qMDZSVStBTjJtcU9nZXNWZS8zdz09
Event webpage link: https://www.carloalberto.org/event/johan-hombert-hec-paris/
Best regards,
Luca Regis