The American Finance Association is an academic organization whose focus is the study and promotion of knowledge of financial economics. It was formed in 1939. Its main publication, the Journal of Finance

Journal of Finance

The Journal of Finance is a peer-reviewed academic journal published by Wiley-Blackwell on behalf of the American Finance Association. It was established in 1946. Its current editors are Campbell R. Harvey and John R. Graham...

, was first published in 1946.

Mission

The purpose of the association is to:

• Act as a mutual association of persons with an interest in finance
• Improve the public understanding of financial problems
• Provide for the exchange of financial ideas through the distribution of the Journal of Finance and other media
• Encourage the study of finance in college
  College
  A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...
  
  s and universities
  University
  A university is an institution of higher education and research, which grants academic degrees in a variety of subjects. A university is an organisation that provides both undergraduate education and postgraduate education...
  
  
• Conduct other activities appropriate for a non-profit, professional society in the field of finance

Administration

The administration of the association is overseen by both officers and a board of advisors. All of these positions are held by faculty at various American universities. The board of directors rotates over time and assists in key decisions and policies. Currently, the editor of the Journal of Finance is Campbell R. Harvey of Duke University.

Membership

The association currently has approximately 8,000 members who pay dues of $40 per year. The membership must be renewed every calendar year, and is obtained only through written application.

A number of members are also distinguished in the Society of Fellows of the Association. These are members who have made significant contributions to the field of finance. This includes all living past presidents and all future presidents.

Annual meeting

An annual meeting of the association is held every year in January, in conjunction the American Economic Association

American Economic Association

The American Economic Association, or AEA, is a learned society in the field of economics, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. It publishes one of the most prestigious academic journals in economics: the American Economic Review...

 and the North American Winter Meetings of the Econometric Society

Econometric Society

The Econometric Society is an international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation with statistics and mathematics. It was founded on December 29, 1930 at the Stalton Hotel in Cleveland, Ohio....

 as a part of the Allied Social Sciences Association

Allied Social Sciences Association

The Allied Social Science Association is a group of academic and professional organizations that are officially recognized by the and are related to the study of social sciences...

. The president speaks on a selected topic and there are presentations of various financial papers. The AFA and the Western Finance Association Meetings are considered to be the two top general finance conferences in the world.

Recent Annual Meeting AFA sites:

2003 Washington, D.C.

2004 San Diego, California

2005 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

2006 Boston, Massachusetts

2007 Chicago, Illinois.

2008 New Orleans, Louisiana

2009 San Francisco, California

2010 Atlanta, Georgia

Past, present and future presidents

2012 Sheridan Titman

Sheridan Titman

Sheridan Titman is a professor of finance at The University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the McAllister Centennial Chair in Financial Services at the McCombs School of Business, and is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He holds a B.S. degree from the University...

2011 Raghuram G. Rajan

2010 John H. Cochrane

John H. Cochrane

John Howland Cochrane is an economist, specializing in financial economics and macroeconomics. He is the AQR Capital Management Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.- Career :...

2009 J. Darrell Duffie

Darrell Duffie

James Darrell Duffie is a Canadian economist. He is the Dean Witter Distinguished Professor of Finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business, and has been on the finance faculty at Stanford since receiving his Ph.D. from Stanford in 1984...

2008 Jeremy C. Stein

2007 Kenneth R. French

Kenneth French

Kenneth Ronald "Ken" French is the Carl E. and Catherine M. Heidt Professor of Finance at the Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College. He has previously been a faculty member at MIT, the Yale School of Management, and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business...

2006 Richard C. Green

2005 John Y. Campbell

John Y. Campbell

John Young Campbell is a British-American economist. He is a professor and Chairman of the Economics department at Harvard University.- Early years :...

2004 René M. Stulz

2003 Douglas W. Diamond

Douglas Diamond

Douglas W. Diamond is the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at University of Chicago’s Graduate School of Business. He specializes in the study of financial intermediaries, financial crises, and liquidity...

2002 Maureen O'Hara

Maureen O'Hara (professor)

Maureen Patricia O'Hara is an American financial economist. O'Hara is the Robert W. Purcell Professor of Management, a professor of finance, and Acting Director in Graduate Studies at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University...

2001 George M. Constantinides

George Constantinides

George M. Constantinides is a financial economist, known for his work on portfolio management, asset pricing, derivatives pricing, and capital markets behavior. He is the Leo Melamed Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a board member of Dimensional Fund...

2000 Franklin Allen

Franklin Allen

Franklin Allen is the Nippon Life Professor of Finance and Economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania...

1999 Hans R. Stoll

Hans Stoll

Hans Reiner Stoll is the Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr. Professor of Finance and Director of the Financial Markets Research Center at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management....

1998 Edwin J. Elton

Ed Elton

Edwin Elton is a Nomura Professor of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business and Academic Director of the Stern Doctoral Program...

1997 Hayne E. Leland

1996 Eduardo S. Schwartz

Eduardo Schwartz

Eduardo Saul Schwartz is a professor of finance at the Anderson School of Management, University of California, Los Angeles, where he holds the California Chair in Real Estate & Land Economics...

1995 Martin J. Gruber

1994 Sanford J. Grossman

Sanford J. Grossman

Sanford "Sandy" Jay Grossman is an American economist and hedge fund manager specializing in quantitative finance. Dr. Grossman’s research has spanned the analysis of information in securities markets, corporate structure, property rights, and optimal dynamic risk management...

1993 Mark Rubinstein

Mark Rubinstein

Mark Edward Rubinstein is a leading financial economist and financial engineer. He is currently Professor of Finance at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley, where he is involved in teaching courses in the , an academic program that is focused on equipping...

1992 Michael C. Jensen

Michael Jensen

Michael Cole "Mike" Jensen is an American economist working in the area of financial economics. He is currently the managing director in charge of organizational strategy at Monitor Group, a strategy consulting firm, and the Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus at...

1991 Robert H. Litzenberger

1990 Myron S. Scholes

Myron Scholes

Myron Samuel Scholes is a Canadian-born American financial economist who is best known as one of the authors of the Black–Scholes equation. In 1997 he was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for a method to determine the value of derivatives...

1989 Michael J. Brennan

Michael Brennan (finance)

Michael J. Brennan is emeritus professor of finance at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Brennan co-designed the Brennan-Schwartz interest rate model and was a pioneer of real options theory...

1988 Stephen A. Ross

Stephen Ross (economist)

Stephen Alan "Steve" Ross is the inaugural Franco Modigliani Professor of Financial Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is known for initiating several important theories and models in financial economics...

1987 Richard Roll

Richard Roll

Richard Roll is an American economist, best known for his work on portfolio theory and asset pricing, both theoretical and empirical....

1986 Robert C. Merton

Robert C. Merton

Robert Carhart Merton is an American economist, Nobel laureate in Economics, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.-Biography:...

1985 Fischer Black

Fischer Black

Fischer Sheffey Black was an American economist, best known as one of the authors of the famous Black–Scholes equation.-Background:...

1984 James C. Van Horne

1983 Stewart C. Myers

Stewart Myers

Stewart Clay Myers is the Robert C. Merton Professor of Financial Economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is notable for his work on capital structure and innovations in capital budgeting and valuation, and has had a "remarkable influence" on both the theory and practice of corporate...

1982 Harry M. Markowitz

Harry Markowitz

Harry Max Markowitz is an American economist and a recipient of the John von Neumann Theory Prize and the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences....

1981 Franco Modigliani

Franco Modigliani

Franco Modigliani was an Italian economist at the MIT Sloan School of Management and MIT Department of Economics, and winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics in 1985.-Life and career:...

1980 William F. Sharpe

William Forsyth Sharpe

William Forsyth Sharpe is the STANCO 25 Professor of Finance, Emeritus at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and the winner of the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences....

1979 Edward J. Kane

1978 Burton G. Malkiel

Burton Malkiel

Burton Gordon Malkiel is an American economist and writer, most famous for his classic finance book A Random Walk Down Wall Street...

1977 Alexander A. Robichek

1976 Merton H. Miller

Merton Miller

Merton Howard Miller was the co-author of the Modigliani-Miller theorem which proposed the irrelevance of debt-equity structure. He shared the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1990, along with Harry Markowitz and William Sharpe...

1975 Myron J. Gordon

1974 John Lintner

John Lintner

John Virgil Lintner, Jr. was a professor at the Harvard Business School in the 1960s and one of the co-creators of the Capital Asset Pricing Model....

1973 Sherman J. Maisel

1972 Irwin Friend

1971 Joseph A. Pechman

1970 Lawrence S. Ritter

1969 Walter E. Hoadley

1968 Harry C. Sauvain

1967 Robert V. Roosa

Robert Roosa

Robert Vincent Roosa was an American economist and banker. He served as Treasury Undersecretary for Monetary Affairs during the Kennedy administration. He believed the U.S...

1966 J. Fred Weston

1965 George Garvy

1964 Roger F. Murray

1963 George T. Conklin, Jr.

1962 Bion B. Howard

1961 Arthur M. Weimer

1960 Paul M. Van Arsdell

1959 James J. O'Leary

1958 Lester V. Chandler

1957 Marshall D. Ketchum

1956 Miller Upton

1955 Norris O. Johnson

1954 Garfield V. Cox

1953 Roland I. Robinson

1952 Edward E. Edwards

1951 Raymond J. Saulnier

1950 Howard R. Bowen

Howard Bowen

Howard Rothmann Bowen was an American economist and college president, serving as the president of Grinnell College from 1955 to 1964 and as the fourteenth President of the University of Iowa from 1964 to 1969...

1949 Neil H. Jacoby

1948 Benjamin H. Beckhart

1947 Lewis A. Froman

1946 Harry G. Guthman

1945 No President

1944 No President

1943 John D. Clark

1942 Charles L. Prather

1941 Chelcie C. Bosland

1940 Kenneth Field

Fellows of the American Finance Association

In January 2000, the Board of Directors of the American Finance Association instituted a Society of Fellows of the Association. The purpose of the society is to recognize those members who have made a distinguished contribution to the field of finance.
Since Fellows are selected by the membership for their contributions to the field of finance, and since this is the principal criterion for election as president, all living past presidents and all future presidents of the association are designated as Fellows. The list below contains all living past presidents and the Fellows selected since that date.
Each year, the Nominating Committee, chaired by the current president, solicits names from the membership and nominates a slate of no more than five candidates from which current Fellows elect a maximum of two new Fellows. Polling of the current Fellows is carried out by the immediate past-president prior to the next annual meeting.
As non past president of the American Finance Association, elected Fellows of the American Finance Association are following:

2012 Milton Harris

2010 Douglas T. Breeden

2009 Richard H. Thaler

Richard Thaler

Richard H. Thaler is an American economist and the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business...

2008 John C. Cox

John C. Cox

John Carrington Cox is the Nomura Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is one of the world's leading experts on options theory and one of the inventors of the Cox–Ross–Rubinstein model for option pricing, as well as of the Cox–Ingersoll–Ross model for interest rate dynamics...

2007 Lars Peter Hansen

Lars Peter Hansen

Lars Peter Hansen is an economist at the University of Chicago.- Biography :After graduating from Utah State University and the University of Minnesota Lars Peter Hansen (b. October 26, 1952 in Champaign, Illinois) is an economist at the University of Chicago.- Biography :After graduating from...

2006 Robert J. Shiller

Robert Shiller

Robert James "Bob" Shiller is an American economist, academic, and best-selling author. He currently serves as the Arthur M. Okun Professor of Economics at Yale University and is a Fellow at the Yale International Center for Finance, Yale School of Management...

2005 Robert F. Engle

Robert F. Engle

Robert Fry Engle III is an American economist and the winner of the 2003 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences, sharing the award with Clive Granger, "for methods of analyzing economic time series with time-varying volatility ".-Biography:Engle was born in Syracuse, New York and went on to...

2004 Robert E. Lucas, Jr.

Robert Lucas, Jr.

Robert Emerson Lucas, Jr. is an American economist at the University of Chicago. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1995 and is consistently indexed among the top 10 economists in the Research Papers in Economics rankings. He is married to economist Nancy Stokey.He received his B.A. in...

2003 Kenneth J. Arrow

Kenneth Arrow

Kenneth Joseph Arrow is an American economist and joint winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics with John Hicks in 1972. To date, he is the youngest person to have received this award, at 51....

2002 Paul A. Samuelson

Paul Samuelson

Paul Anthony Samuelson was an American economist, and the first American to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The Swedish Royal Academies stated, when awarding the prize, that he "has done more than any other contemporary economist to raise the level of scientific analysis in...

2001 Eugene F. Fama

Eugene Fama

Eugene Francis "Gene" Fama is an American economist, known for his work on portfolio theory and asset pricing, both theoretical and empirical. He is currently Robert R...

Fischer Black Prize

Biennially, the association awards the Fischer Black Prize

Fischer Black Prize

Fischer Black Prize is a memorial prize awarded in honor of Fischer Black that rewards individual financial research. The prize was established in 2002 and first awarded in 2003. It is awarded to a financial scientist for a body of work that demonstrates significant original research that is...

 at its annual meeting. The award, named in honor of economist Fischer Black

Fischer Black

Fischer Sheffey Black was an American economist, best known as one of the authors of the famous Black–Scholes equation.-Background:...

, recognizes an outstanding young academic whose original research has made a significant contribution to the field of finance.

Brattle Prizes

Annually, the Brattle Prize

Brattle Prize

The Brattle Prize is an annual prize given to authors with the best corporate finance research papers published in the Journal of Finance.-Details:Each year the associate editors of the Journal of Finance award five papers for excellence...

s are awarded annually for outstanding papers on corporate finance

Corporate finance

Corporate finance is the area of finance dealing with monetary decisions that business enterprises make and the tools and analysis used to make these decisions. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize shareholder value while managing the firm's financial risks...

 at its annual meeting.

Smith Breeden Prizes

Annually, the association awards the Smith Breeden Prize

Smith Breeden Prize

The Smith Breeden Prize is an annual prize given to authors with the best finance research papers published in the Journal of Finance in any area other than corporate finance.-The Award:...

s for the top three papers in the Journal of Finance in any area other than corporate finance at its annual meeting.

Morgan Stanley-AFA Award for Excellence in Finance

AFA has established a new bi-annual finance award to be granted based on an individual's career achievements in outstanding thought leadership in the field of financial economics. Formally it is the Morgan Stanley-American Finance Association Award for Excellence in Finance. The Award will be granted by AFA beginning in 2008 and continuing for 5 bi-annual periods. There shall only be one recipient of the Award in any bi-annual period.

Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley is a global financial services firm headquartered in New York City serving a diversified group of corporations, governments, financial institutions, and individuals. Morgan Stanley also operates in 36 countries around the world, with over 600 offices and a workforce of over 60,000....

 (NYSE:MS) and the American Finance Association (AFA) are pleased to announce that Eugene F. Fama

Eugene Fama

Eugene Francis "Gene" Fama is an American economist, known for his work on portfolio theory and asset pricing, both theoretical and empirical. He is currently Robert R...

, the Robert R. McCormick

Robert R. McCormick

Robert Rutherford "Colonel" McCormick was a member of the McCormick family of Chicago who became owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune newspaper...

 Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, Graduate School of Business, has been chosen as the first recipient of the Morgan Stanley-AFA Award for Excellence in Finance. Professor Fama is widely regarded as the father of the efficient market theory

Efficient market hypothesis

In finance, the efficient-market hypothesis asserts that financial markets are "informationally efficient". That is, one cannot consistently achieve returns in excess of average market returns on a risk-adjusted basis, given the information available at the time the investment is made.There are...

and is world-renowned for his original theoretical and empirical work on portfolio theory, asset pricing, and capital structure. The Award comes with a $200,000 cash grant to an eligible institution to be used in support of research in the financial field of the recipient's choosing. Professor Fama selected the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business, to receive the gift.

The AFA and Morgan Stanley announce Michael C. Jensen as Recipient of the 2009 Award for Excellence in Financial Economics. Professor Jensen is one of the most cited scholars in the social sciences and has produced more than 100 scientific papers in addition to hundreds of articles on economics, finance and business-related topics. Additionally, he co-founded the Journal of Financial Economics, one of the top scientific journals in financial economics and the Social Science Research Network (SSRN), rated number 1 of 400 worldwide open source repositories for scholarly research. Professor Jensen has selected the National Bureau of Economic Research, Harvard Business School and the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester as recipients of the $200,000 cash grant.

External links

• American Finance Association
  • Morgan Stanley AFA Award