Finance Professor Hayne Leland at the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business won the first-ever Stephen A. Ross Prize from the Foundation for the Advancement of Research in Financial Economics (FARFE) for his research in corporate debt pricing and capital structure.
The foundation is a consortium of finance academics and practitioners from around the world. It created the $100,000 prize in 2007 to recognize and encourage research in financial economics—a field that explains the underpinnings of corporate finance and capital markets.
Leland won the award for his 1994 Journal of Finance paper, "Corporate Debt Value, Bond Covenants, and Optimal Capital Structure." The paper analyzed how firms determine the optimal mix of debt and equity to acquire funding at the lowest cost.
Current Research Interests
Dynamic investment strategies and portfolio insurance
Informational asymmetries, structure, and intermediation in financial markets
Regulation of insider trading
Risky debt valuation
Industry Experience
Director and founding principal of the investment firm Leland O'Brien Rubinstein Associates Inc.
Past president of the American Finance Association.
