The Department of Financial Management, Campus Carolus Antwerp, we are looking for a motivated, independent and enthusiastic researcher in the field of corporate finance.
The Financial Department is a research and education center of the Faculty of Economics and Business of the KU Leuven, on the campus of Antwerpen. We aim for independent state-of-the-art academic research on corporate finance issues.
Project
It is well established that the communication between firm management and stakeholders goes beyond the quantitative information of the numbers reported by the firm in the earnings report, balance sheet or other corporate disclosures. In fact, the firm stakeholders also process and analyze the sentiment of the qualitative information of corporate disclosures while making their decisions. However, no consensus has been reached on how to accurately measure sentiment. It has often been left to the sole discretion of the researcher to define the sentiment of a financial disclosure, which has led to the development of different methodologies, different underlying data sets or different libraries. Given the relevance of the field of textual analysis in finance, an important research question is how to estimate the sentiment of a corporate disclosure accurately in order to maximize its informativeness for future firm performance. The objective of this project is to fill this gap and analyze the additional information that can be extracted from the sentiment data by exploiting the longitudinal nature of corporate disclosures of a cross-section of firms observed at different points in time.
Profile
- Master in Economics, Business Economics, Commercial Engineering, or similar.
- Having at least "cum laude" during master years.
- Enthusiastic and motivated to conduct original research.
- Independent and critical.
- Excellent in writing and speaking English.
Offer
- The candidate is expected to prepare and finish a PhD at the Financial Management research group of the KU Leuven, campus Antwerpen, under the supervision of Prof.dr. James Thewissen.
- Full-time position of one year, renewed upon positive evaluation.
- Working in an attractive, dynamic and international environment.
- You are expected to conduct excellent state-of-the-art research.
- You will apply for scholarships to finance your research activities.
- You are expected to attend, participate in seminars and will occasionally be involved in teaching activities, including the supervision of master theses.
- You will take part to the department's activities, such as exam supervision/corrections.
Interested?
It is recommended to apply as soon as possible. Screening of applications will begin immediately and will continue until the position is filled. For more information please contact Prof. dr. James Thewissen, email: James.Thewissen@kuleuven.be.
Application Deadline : 27 February 2015