About the Lab

The International Laboratory of Financial Economics (LFE ) was established in 2010 at the International College of Economics and Finance (ICEF) of the Higher School of Economics (HSE) in collaboration with the London School of Economics (LSE). Its main goal is to support research at the best international standards. Many research projects have a particular focus on emerging financial markets. The core research team consists of Moscow-based researchers who hold a PhD degree from recognized European and US universities with an affiliation to ICEF or HSE, as well as international fellows. Christian Julliard (LSE) who was the former research coordinator of the LFE has provided a significant contribution to shaping the research agenda of the laboratory. The Laboratory is headed by Vladimir Sokolov (ICEF).

The laboratory helps to create an intellectual environment for fruitful research in financial economics and provides research support to resident researchers and international fellows. The LFE serves to broaden the interaction and contacts of its resident researchers with the international scientific community. To this end, LFE organizes the annual International Moscow Finance Conference on research in finance and invites researchers to the joint LFE-ICEF research seminar. The resident researchers regularly present their work at international conferences and publish in recognized peer-reviewed international journals in finance and economics. Many papers have previously been disseminated in the ICEF Working Paper series. Research assistants form an integral part of the team in the laboratory. As a rule, these are students enrolled in the two-year Master's Programme in Financial Economics of ICEF or advanced students in ICEF's Bachelor Programme. This helps students who are interested in research to get experience in economic research and to raise their academic profile. In addition, the results of the research find their way into the courses and student seminars at ICEF. The laboratory benefits from the library and data resources available at the Higher School of Economics and should facilitate the purchase of new data sets. Currently, the work of the laboratory is funded by the Center of Fundamental Research of HSE and ICEF.

The laboratory has three priority areas of research:

•  Finance, Banking, and the Macroeconomy
•  Efficiency o fFinancial markets
•  Corporate Finance and Governance

Events
Jointly with ICEF, the LFE organizes a research seminar series in finance. A list of past seminars can be found here.

LFE also hosts the annual International Moscow Finance Conference to which top international researchers in the area of financial economics are invited. The first conference was held in 2011.