The 31st CEPR/Study Center Gerzensee European Summer Symposium in Financial Markets (ESSFM) will take place in Gerzensee from 20 to 31 July 2020. The Organising Committee for this symposium consists of: Vikrant Vig (London Business School and CEPR), Norman Schuerhoff (Université de Lausanne and CEPR) and Dmitry Livdan (University of California, Berkeley). This call for papers invites you to express your interest in attending this symposium, or to submit a paper proposal in any area of financial economics and related fields.

The meeting will include daily seminars in the morning, in which participants present their work, as well as less formal evening seminars scheduled at the beginning of the Symposium. A substantial amount of time is reserved for independent work and collaborative research, which provides participants with a unique opportunity to interact and discuss each other's research.

In addition, five mornings will be devoted to 'focus sessions', each of which concentrates on some recent developments in corporate finance (week one: 20-24 July) and asset pricing (week two: 27-31 July).

The focus sessions for the corporate finance week are organised by Vikrant Vig (London Business School and CEPR) on the theme of "Financial Regulation", Patrick Bolton (Columbia Business School and CEPR) on the theme of "Sustainable Finance" and José-Luis Peydró (Imperial College, London and CEPR) on the theme of "Inequality and Central Bank Policies".

The focus sessions for the asset pricing week are organised by Jonathan Berk (Stanford) and Johan Walden (University of Lausanne, UC Berkeley, and SFI). One of the themes will focus on "Performance Measurement". The other theme is "Climate Change and Financial Economics".

To foster the desired interaction, we ask participants to spend one working week at the Symposium. Committing to attend for only two or three days is not fair to the speakers, to all those who spared the time to attend, and especially to the many researchers whose applications were turned down.

A number of places at the symposium are specifically reserved for younger European scholars (based in Europe or overseas), who are especially encouraged to apply. Senior researchers are therefore requested to pass this information on to junior colleagues working in finance and related fields.

Funding

Food and accommodation (checking in on Sunday and out on Friday only) are provided free of charge to participants thanks to the generosity of the Study Center Gerzensee. Please note that additional nights are at the participants' own expense and that no meals (except for breakfast) are provided over the middle weekend. Space is allocated first to academic participants, but subject to the availability of rooms, spouses/partners can be accommodated at a charge to cover costs. There is only limited accommodation available for children, and this will be allocated on a first-come, first-served basis.

There is limited travel funding available, but we encourage participants to use their own grants to cover such costs. Please indicate on your reply whether you will be able to cover your own travel costs, or whether you will require funding from CEPR (if there are insufficient funds to cover all travel expenses, we will attach priority to funding junior participants). If you are allocated travel funding, this will be covered according to CEPR travel guidelines.

How to apply

To respond, please visit: https://portal.cepr.org/ceprstudy-center-gerzensee-european-summer-symposium-financial-markets-essfm-2020 and indicate whether or not you wish to present a paper or would be willing to act as a discussant. The deadline for replies is 6pm (GMT), Friday 27 March 2020. If you have any difficulties registering for this meeting, please contact Mandy Chan, Senior Events Officer at [email protected] (with subject header "5744 - ESSFM 2020") or +44 20 7183 8804.

During the online submission process, you will also be asked to indicate which week you would like to attend and whether you would be interested in attending even if your paper was not selected. We also ask that you submit a link to your current CV.

The organisers will aim to notify successful applicants by April 2020.

Yours sincerely,