Invitation and Call For Papers
SIFR Conference on Re-Thinking Beta

August 22-23, 2013, Clarion Hotel Sign in Stockholm

Funded by the Ragnar Soderberg Foundation and the Torsten Soderberg Foundation

The Institute for Financial Research (SIFR) is pleased to invite academics and practitioners to a conference on "Re-Thinking Beta" on August 22-23, 2013, at Clarion Hotel Sign Meeting, Ostra Jarnvagsgatan 33, in Stockholm.

The first conference day will feature key-note presentations by leading scholars in the field. These presentations will center around recent empirical evidence and theoretical developments on the relation between expected returns, betas, and volatility. The program for the first day is:

08:30 Coffee

09:00-12:30 "Speculative Betas"
Harrison Hong, Princeton University

"Betting Against Beta"
Lasse Heje Pedersen, New York University

Coffee Break

"Asset Pricing Theory: Reflections after 50+ Years"
William F. Sharpe, Stanford University
(followed by a discussion moderated by Michael Brennan, UCLA)

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-15:30 "Bank Capital and the Low Beta Anomaly"
Malcolm P. Baker, Harvard University

"Arbitrage Asymmetry and the Idiosyncratic Volatility Puzzle"
Robert F. Stambaugh, University of Pennsylvania

15:30 Concluding remarks and mingle

The second conference day has a standard academic format, and aims to provide an academic forum showcasing the frontier research in asset pricing and asset allocation. We plan on having six presentations of recent research papers, with a discussant for each paper. See http://www.sifr.org

Participation is limited; and therefore, we suggest that you e-mail anki.helmer@sifr.org as soon as possible, and no later than August 1, to ensure participation. Please include your contact details.