Banco Popular de Puerto Rico

Pengjie Gao is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Notre Dame. Currently, he also serves as a visiting economist at the Shanghai Stock Exchange in China. His research focuses on market frictions and prices. In recent papers, he studied institutional investment policy constraints induced liquidity events and asset prices; financial distress and default risk; risk and return profiles of the convergence trades; information processing capability of individual and institutional investors and their performance; short-sale constraints and asset prices; investor attention and asset prices; and information network and prices. His articles have appeared in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies, among others. He is first prize winners of Chicago Quantitative Alliance (CQA) Academic Competition, and Crowell Memorial Prize; and second prize winner of JFE Fama-DFA Award. He received competitive research grants from EMI on security transaction tax (2012), Moody’s KMV on credit risk (2006), and Morgan Stanley on short-sale constraints (2005). He earned his doctoral degree in Financial Economics from Northwestern University. Prior to joining academics, he worked for Pequot Capital Management and Zacks IFE.

Paul H. Schultz is the John W. and Maude Clark Professor of Finance at the University of Notre Dame. He received his B.A. from Macalester College, and his M.B.A. and Ph.D. in Finance and Economics from the University of Chicago. His recent research interests include the pricing of municipal bonds, financial regulation and the Dodd-frank Act, arbitrage and the prices of dual class shares, and the ability of mutual funds to pick stocks.Schultz’s paper, “Options and the Bubble,” co-authored with Robert Battalio, was named as one of eight finalists for the 2006 Smith Breeden Award, given by the Journal of Finance. He won the Smith Breeden Award for his paper, “Why Do Nasdaq Market Makers Avoid Odd-Eighth Quotes,” co-authored with Bill Christie. He is an Associate Editor at the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and has previously served on the editorial board of the Journal of Finance. He has also on Nasdaq’s Economic Advisory Board.Paul is the director of the Center for the Study of Financial Regulation.

Natalya Shnitser is an Associate Research Scholar in Law and the John R. Raben/Sullivan & Cromwell Executive Director for the Yale Law School Center for the Study of Corporate Law. She received her J.D. degree from Yale Law School, where she was a Coker Fellow and the editor-in-chief of the Yale Journal on Regulation.She holds an M.A. in International Policy Studies and a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University. Prior to joining the Center for the Study of Corporate Law, she was an associate in the New York office of Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

Kimberly J. Cornaggia is an Associate Professor of Finance in the Kogod School of Business at American University. Professor Cornaggia�s research interests include financial distress, capital structure, credit ratings, and municipal finance.She has published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and the Review of Financial Studies. Dr. Cornaggia earned her PhD in finance from the Krannert Graduate School at Purdue University, and has since enjoyed academic appointments at the Pennsylvania State University, the College of William and Mary, New York University, and Indiana University.Dr. Cornaggia has taught a wide array of courses at the graduate and undergraduate levels including corporation finance, corporate restructuring, equity valuation, multinational finance, and capital markets. Non-academic experience includes analyzing asset-backed securities markets and the credit ratings industry for the Office of Economic Analysis at the US Securities and Exchange Commission, first in 2003-04 and later in 2007-08. Since then, she provides the SEC with periodic lectures on credit ratings in Washington and abroad.

Dr. Vijayakumar (Vijay) serves as Professor of Accounting at Virginia Commonwealth University. He researches primarily in the areas of State and Local Government Finances and Accounting focusing on Municipal Bonds. He has published several articles in journals such as the Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Accounting and Public Policy, The Financial Review, Municipal Finance Journal, and the Journal of Financial Services Research.Vijay has served the Government and Nonprofit Section of the American Accounting Association, as President, as Secretary / Treasurer, and as the Director – Research.  Vijay has a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Bangalore University, a Management degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, and a Ph.D in Accounting from the University of Pittsburgh. He has also held various senior positions as an Assistant Commissioner in the Internal Revenue Service – Government of India.

Edward Rice is an Associate Professor of Finance and Business Economics in the Foster School of Business of the University of Washington. He received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California at Los Angeles with specialization in Corporate Finance and Industrial Organization.  He received two degrees from the University of Rochester, an M.B.A. and a B.A. in Economics and Mathematics.Ed has published research in many areas of corporate finance and microeconomics, and served as a referee for many leading journals.  He is a past associate editor of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis.  Ed has previously taught at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana and the University of Chicago.  His research interests include corporate control, applied microeconomics, and general corporate finance.Ed has served on the committees of many Ph.D. students, at least three of whom became chaired full professors at major research universities.  At the University of Washington over the last several years, he has been the Finance area coordinator for the Ph.D. program, and has also won many MBA teaching awards.  He is past Faculty Director of the University of Washington E-Business Program.

Eric Toder is co-director of the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center and an Institute Fellow at the Urban Institute. He has held a number of senior positions in tax offices in the United States and overseas, including Deputy Assistant Secretary for Tax Analysis at the U.S. Treasury Department, Deputy Assistant Director for Tax Analysis at the Congressional Budget Office, Director of the Office of Research at the Internal Revenue Service, and consultant to the New Zealand Treasury. He has authored and co-authored numerous papers on tax policy issues, including papers on value added tax, tax expenditures, capital gains taxation, taxation of retirement savings, and the effects of proposals to replace the federal income tax with a consumption tax on the states. Dr. Toder received his Ph.D.in economics from the University of Rochester in 1971.