Category: Recent Seminars

Date: 09 March 2026, Monday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Accuracy and uncertainty in venture selection: The roles of experience and complexity” by Thomas Astebro HEC Paris Abstract  Venture capitalists, business angels, funding agencies, and incubators evaluate ventures,a difficult task where decision uncertainty is high. We examine how the degree of cognitive complexity and human expertise affects judges’ admission recommendations at an incubator. Judges read an application, use preset criteria to score it, and form an intuitive overall judgment to accept or reject the application. We model and test how cognitive complexity and judge expertise affect this judgment through a Bayesian classification model, with implications on classification uncertainty and accuracy. Judges demonstrate poor accuracy in evaluating venture quality, but we show that the decision environment is so noisy that…

Date: 04 March 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "The Accredited Investor Definition, Private Investments, and Wealth Inequality in the US” by Aras Canipek Columbia University & SAFE Abstract  I study household finances around the income eligibility rules of the accredited investor definition that allow only high-income households access to private investments. Such investments have recently been linked to higher returns and the increase in wealth inequality. My analysis shows that access to private markets increases private investments. The result provides an answer to an important question in the literature and in politics: differences in private investments are not only caused by differences in abilities and tastes between wealthy and poor households, but also simply by access to private investments. Moreover, I find discontinuities in wealth and returns.…

Date: 25 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "From Harm to Harmony? Epistemic Dominance and the Practice of Moral Repair” by Jordi Vives IESE Abstract  The restoration of damaged stakeholder relationships after a transgression, “moral repair,” has become an important and visible corporate practice. Yet, business ethics research offers incomplete guidance on it, because although organizations are investing in moral repair, victims frequently report dissatisfaction. Critical scholars generally attribute these failures to systemic power, but tend to overlook organization level repair tactics. Integrating these perspectives, we examine how systemic power shapes moral repair. Drawing on a case study of corporate repair efforts after the 2012 Marikana massacre in South Africa, we show that enduring victim dissatisfaction arises from epistemic dominance, a form of hegemonic power rooted in…

Date: 20 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Supply chain risk management: Sharing information and exploring uncertainty" by Stefan Minner Technical University of Munih Abstract  Different sources of uncertainty and local information present major challenges in logistics and supply chain coordination. Effective distributed data-driven learning and decision making requires a balance between proactive and reactive exploration and exploitation as well as uncertainty modeling in dynamically changing environments. We discuss cooperative and competitive coordination schemes, different information sources and fusion concepts, digital technologies and strategies for effective information sharing and learning, and economic frameworks for information valuation.  Bio Stefan Minner is a Full Professor for Logistics and Supply Chain Management at the School of Management, Technical University of Munich (TUM) and a core-member of the Munich Data Science…

Date: 18 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Monetary Policy Shocks: A New Hope — Large Language Models and Central Bank Communication” by Ruben Fernandez Fuertes Bocconi University Abstract  I develop a multi-agent LLM framework that processes Federal Reserve communications to construct narrative monetary policy surprises. By analyzing Beige Books and Minutes released before each FOMC meeting, the system generates conditional expectations that yield less noisy surprises than market-based measures. These surprises produce theoretically consistent impulse responses where contractionary shocks generate persistent disinflationary effects, and enable profitable yield curve trading strategies that outperform alternatives. By directly extracting expectations rather than cleaning surprises ex post, this approach demonstrates how multi-agent LLMs can implement narrative identification at scale without contamination in high-frequency measure. Bio Rubén Fernández-Fuertes is a financial…

Date: 11 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Inflation Expectations and Firms' Decisions in High Inflation” by Okan Akarsu Sabancı University Abstract  We conducted a survey of Turkish firms, using randomized treatments to provide varied information about inflation in a high-inflation environment. By matching the survey data with administrative firm-level data on employment, sales, credit, and foreign exchange transactions, we explore the impact of exogenous variations in inflation expectations on firms' behavior, borrowing decisions, and expectations. Our findings are summarized in seven facts: (i) information treatments are effective at generating exogenous variation in inflation expectations, even when inflation is high; (ii) the pass-through to firms' own price, wage, and cost expectations is strong, reaching up to 60%; (iii) firms adopt a supply-side interpretation of inflation—lower inflation expectations…

Date: 4 February 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "The Pricing and Economic Impact of Legal Risk" by Dean Ryu Saïd Business School – Oxford Abstract  Legal risk is an inherent feature of markets, rooted in the institutions that enable economic activity, yet it remains difficult to measure across firms. This paper constructs a text-based measure of firm-level legal risk (LRISK) using earnings call transcripts. LRISK predicts class action lawsuits and spikes during periods of heightened legal incidents. A one standard deviation increase predicts a 3–7% decline in future investment and lowers firms’ reliance on debt, consistent with precautionary motives. Legal risk is positively priced, particularly after 2010, and varies across legal origins, reflecting institutional differences. Bio Dean Ryu is a Finance Ph.D. Candidate at Said Business School,…

Date: 30 January 2026, Friday Time: 13.30 – 14.30 Place: MA-330 "Breaching the Chinese Wall: Cross-Market Information Flow Following Financial Institution Mergers" by Ehsan Mahdikhani Stockholm School of Economics Abstract  How does access to private loan information affect institutional investors' equity returns? Exploiting mergers between asset managers and lenders as a plausibly exogenous shock to loan-side information access, we find that after gaining access institutional investors earn higher abnormal equity returns: within institutions, managers earn 3.1 pp higher annualized returns on stocks for which they have loan-side access than on their other holdings without such access, and across institutions trading the same stock, informed managers outperform equity-only peers by 1.7 pp annualized, consistent with debt positions conferring information unavailable to pure shareholders. Mechanism tests show larger gains when financial-reporting covenants…

Date: 28 January 2026, Wednesday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 "Why Do I Do What I Do? How Searching for Meaning at Work Can Facilitate the Spread of Unethical Conduct Through Organizations" by Marius Van Dijke RSM Abstract  Existing work has explained the trickling down of unethical leader behavior through organizations in terms of social learning or social exchange processes. We identify a key limitation of these explanations and propose a novel process to explain the trickling down of unethical leader behavior. We build on Baumeister’s (1991) account of meaning, which depicts it as a system of mental connections between objects and events. We propose that strongly (vs. weakly) searching for meaning at work strengthens trickle-down effects of unethical leadership from higher-level managers, via lower-level managers to employees. We…

Date: 19 January 2026, Monday Time: 10.30 – 11.30 Place: MA-330 " Digital Solutions to the Obesity Crisis: Evaluating the Impact of Online Grocery Delivery Services " by Alireza Golmohammadi Belk College of Business Abstract  Despite extensive efforts in developed nations to combat obesity, rates continue to rise, particularly in the U.S., with low-income populations being disproportionately affected. This study examines the potential of third-party online grocery delivery services (OGDS) to mitigate obesity. Utilizing a staggered difference-in-differences approach, we analyze the impact of OGDS’s entry on obesity rates. Our findings reveal that OGDS entry is associated with a significant reduction in obesity rates, averaging -.64%, which translates to an annual medical cost saving of $2.91 billion. However, the positive impact of OGDS entry is less pronounced in low-income areas, indicating…