Conference Announcement and Registration
Finance Down Under: Building on the Best from the Cellars of Finance

March 15-17, 2012, Melbourne, Australia

The Department of Finance in the Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne is pleased to announce the opening of registration for its annual Finance Down Under conference.

We have expanded our annual conference to embrace the new theme: Building on the Best from the Cellars of Finance. Each year, the Saturday special session will build around a vintage work that has inspired advances and withstood the test of time. The Friday sessions continue to be open to papers from all areas in Finance.

For this year, we have chosen to celebrate the 20 years of research since the Jegadeesh-Titman classic "Returns to buying winners and selling losers: Implications for stock market efficiency."

Based on the recommendations of the 51 member Program Committee, we have chosen the 17 most highly rated papers from the many submissions. Along with the invited discussants, academics from more than 20 universities in Europe, the U.S., Asia and Australia will present at the conference. Our keynote speakers for 2012 are Kenneth French (Dartmouth College), Mark Grinblatt (UCLA), Toby Moskowitz (University of Chicago), and Sheridan Titman (University of Texas at Austin).

The welcome reception on the evening of Thursday March 15 and the end-of-day canapes on Friday March 16 both feature the great wines of the region. The Saturday March 17 evening conference dinner will be held in the Yarra Valley after an afternoon of touring its great wineries.

To ensure the highest quality interaction, overall attendance to the conference will be limited.

PROGRAM: The program is as follows:

Evening of Thursday March 15, 2012: Wine reception

Friday, March 16:
9:00 - 9:10: Conference Welcome
9:10 - 9:55: Keynote Speech: Toby Moskowitz (University of Chicago)

Morning Parallel Sessions
10:00 - 12:15
Crisis in the Small, Medium, and Large
Session Chair: Carsten Murawski (University of Melbourne)
Speakers:
Jacob Stromberg (Swiss Finance Institute)
Torben G. Andersen (Northwestern University)
Bart Zhou Yueshen (VU University Amsterdam)

Aggregate Markets from the Ground Up
Session Chair: Zhen Shi (University of Melbourne)
Speakers:
Douglas T. Breeden (MIT and Duke University)
Hao Zhou (Federal Reserve Board)
Iulian Obreja (University of Colorado at Boulder)

Afternoon Parallel Sessions
1:45 - 4:35
Information: Trickles, Tides, and Torrents
Session Chair: Lyndon Moore (University of Melbourne)
Speakers:
Denis Sosyura (University of Michigan)
Tze-Minn Mandy Tham (Nanyang Technological University)
Ranadeb Chaudhuri (Oakland University)
Mark S. Seasholes (HKUST)

Risk from Every Perspective
Session Chair: Garry Twite (Australian National University)
Speakers:
Thomas W. Bates (Arizona State University)
Lingling Wang (Tulane University)
Alberto Rossi (University of California San Diego)
Christoph Merkle (University of Mannheim)

4:45 - 5:30 Keynote Speech: Kenneth French (Dartmouth College)

Saturday, March 17

Special Session
8:45 - 11:55 Momentum in Momentum
Session Chair: Spencer Martin (University of Melbourne)
Speakers:
Jeffrey Pontiff (Boston College)
Paulo Maio (Hanken School of Economics)
Wenlan Qian (National University of Singapore)

10:55 - 11:55 Panel Discussion on momentum
Panel chair: Mark Grinblatt (UCLA)
Panel participants:
Andrea Frazzini (AQR Capital Management)
Toby Moskowitz (University of Chicago)
Sheridan Titman (University of Texas at Austin)

REGISTRATION: The registration fee for the conference is $375. The social program consisting of the Yarra valley wine tour and dinner in the Valley requires the payment of a $250 fee. For partners and guests, a very limited number of social-only registrations will be available. There is a limit on the number of participants in the conference and/or the wine tour, and participation cannot be guaranteed. The deadline for registration for the conference and for the social program is February 24, 2011.

FURTHER INFORMATION: Registration and conference details (including paper titles, papers and discussant details along with advice on enjoying a trip to Australia) can be found on the conference website: http://www.fdu2012.org

For further questions, please email AnnMaree Murray at: mua@unimelb.edu.au

ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:
Neal Galpin, Spencer J. Martin, Jordan Neyland, and Stefan Petry
The Department of Finance
Faculty of Business & Economics
The University of Melbourne
Victoria 3010 Australia