Two Young Bocconi Scholars Win the 4nations Cup

"The nation that delivers the best young finance scholars raises the cup after a day of fierce battle", the claim of the 4nations Cup goes. And the cup, this year, has been raised by Nicola Gennaioli and Nicolas Serrano Velarde, from Bocconi's Department of Finance.

The competition took place on Friday, 2 May, at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. The eight candidates from Italy, Switzerland, the UK and the Netherlands had 40 minutes each to present a paper of theirs and at the end of the day the audience voted and decreed the winners. The opponents of Gennaioli and Serrano-Velarde came from Universitaet Zuerich, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, London Business School, London School of Economics, Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam and Universiteit van Tilburg.

"This is not yet another new finance conference... it is a CONTEST!", the organizers claim in the website –capital letters and exclamation mark included. The candidates – who must have obtained their PhD less than 10 years ago - are selected by a scientific committee whose members are affiliated with universities in the participating countries (Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance's Luigi Guiso and Università di Napoli Federico II's Marco Pagano for Italy). It is not required to be a citizen of the country that one represents.

Gennaioli presented Finance and the Preservation of Wealth, a paper written with Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny; Serrano-Velarde Risk Management and Rating Segmentation in Credit Markets, with Giacomo Rodano and Emanuele Tarantino.

"The cup is a lighthearted but serious competition", Gennaioli says. "The day is similar to a normal conference day, but the questions from the audience are pricklier, because they have to rate the candidates. The baseline idea is to strengthen the European community of finance researchers".