Department of Finance Associate Professor Haitao Mo and PhD Student Mehdi Khorram Receive Awards for Research

LSU Department of Finance Associate Professor Haitao Mo and Department of Finance PhD Student Mehdi Khorram recently received awards for excellence in research. Mo was awarded the Holt Harrison Faculty Award and Khorram the Outstanding Doctoral Student Award.

The Holt Harrison Faculty Award recognizes a Department of Finance faculty member for outstanding research accomplishments. This year’s $10,000 award was presented to Mo for his publication “Option Momentum” forthcoming in the Journal of Finance, the premier journal in the field.  Mo’s paper shows that trading on option momentum – the tendency for options to continue their past price movements into the future, is indeed profitable.  Momentum trading is a popular strategy that the asset management industry pursues actively via factor index funds and ETFs or portfolio tilting, to deliver outperformance. 

“This is an important paper in that it establishes the value of an active portfolio management strategy commonly used by the industry. It reflects the significant impact our faculty’s research has on industry practice and speaks to what our faculty bring to the classroom, “commented Department of Finance Chair Rajesh Narayanan.

The Outstanding Doctoral Student Award recognizes a Department of Finance PhD student for exceptional performance in research. This year, the $5,000 award was presented to Khorram for his work on Mo’s forthcoming paper in the Journal of Finance.

“This award speaks to the quality of work that our doctoral students are capable of producing when working with faculty. Less than 1% of all finance faculty worldwide have a publication in the Journal of Finance, so it is quite remarkable that one of our doctoral students has one before he graduates, “said Narayanan.

Khorram will join Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) as an assistant professor of finance beginning Fall 2022.

 

About the Department of Finance

The Department of Finance offers high-quality curricula to undergraduate and graduate students interested in careers in corporate finance, asset management, real estate, insurance, banking, financial planning and business law. The department boasts internationally renowned research faculty in several areas, including derivatives, asset management, banking and spatial econometrics. The department’s Securities Markets Analysis Research & Trading Lab utilizes the Bloomberg Professional service, the platform used by more than 300,000 leading business and financial professionals worldwide to make informed business decisions, and an extensive library of financial databases including the Wharton WRDS System. Additionally, the department encourages, supports and conducts research in real estate by housing the nationally renowned Real Estate Research Institute. For more information, visit lsu.edu/business/finance or call 225-578-6291.

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