The Swiss Finance Institute (SFI) and the USI Università della Svizzera italiana (Lugano) were chosen to host the 41st Annual Meeting of the European Finance Association (EFA) from August 27 to 30, 2014 in Lugano. The conference, which was attended by 800 senior economists from around the world, was a unique opportunity to raise the profile of Switzerland as a center of leading financial research and practice. In this publication we present some of the highlights of these extraordinary three days.

With 1,800 submitted papers (of which only one out of seven was accepted for presentation) and 90 parallel sessions the 2014 Annual Meeting set new EFA records both in terms of quality and participation. The program comprised a total of 270 presentations, a plenary panel session on the role of finance in society, a doctoral tutorial, numerous networking opportunities, and last but not least, the keynote address by the 2013 Nobel Laureate, Professor Robert J. Shiller.

Bridging the gap between academia and practice in order to share knowledge is an important part of the mission of the Swiss Finance Institute. We therefore integrated a full one-day session for senior industry professionals into the EFA’s academic conference: the SFI Industry Forum. The event entirely focused on “Opportunities and Challenges in Asset Management” and gave insights into the latest academic research and the best business practices in this field. The 120 attendees were senior finance professionals from Switzerland and abroad.

We encourage you to explore the 270 presented academic papers (full-text PDF versions)  as well as the webcasts of the keynote address and the SFI Industry Forum talks.

We look forward to building on the success of the 2014 EFA Annual Meeting.

Thank you

The EFA 2014 is now officially closed. It was a great honour for us to host the 41st edition of the EFA Annual Meeting.

Organizing the conference would not have been possible without the support from all involved parties, including track chairs, reviewers, session chairs, authors, presenters, discussants, partners, exhibitors, and all other participants.

We hope you enjoyed EFA 2014 and Lugano and look forward to seeing you again next year in Vienna (August 19-22, 2015).