Finance

About Our Finance Faculty And Research

Our faculty's research specialties include all major areas, from corporate financial policies to issues in investments and mathematical finance.

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Featured Research

From Bruce Carlin, Professor of Finance

"Classic economics teaches that competition is a panacea to market ills. In my research, I show that competition actually worsens the tendency of institutions to make products and prices more complex. A second surprising finding is that small-scale education for consumers may actually make things worse. This is because providers may respond to educational efforts by obfuscating prices or other product attributes in a different way." - Professor Bruce Carlin

From Kunal Sachdeva, Assistant Professor of Finance

Professor Kunal Sachdeva has won the 2020 Moskowitz prize from the Kellogg School of Management! His award-winning research, The Real Effects of Environmental Activist Investing, was co-authored with Assistant Professor Lakshmi Naaraayanan and Varun Sharma of the London Business School.

The finance area and its curriculum at the Jones Graduate School of Business reflects the broad interests, experience and expertise of our faculty, ranging from basic financial management to more technical subjects such as options and other derivatives, and financial modeling.

The exceptional accessibility of the finance faculty is also the hallmark of our new doctoral program in finance, debuting in the fall of 2010, which aims to provide students with the knowledge and skills necessary to become first rate scholars in financial economics. The essence of the finance doctoral program is the opportunity to learn from and work with a top quality faculty on a broad range of topics in modern finance.

Our faculty's research specialties include all major areas, from corporate financial policies to issues in investments and mathematical finance, with their papers consistently published in the top academic journals of the finance profession. Visit Rice Business Wisdom for examples of our finance faculty's peer-reviewed business research presented in a compelling, quick-to-read package.

Members of our faculty also nurture skills and traits that are critical to success for tomorrow’s leaders. In every course, students have an opportunity to work one-on-one with an accessible, involved and energetic member of the faculty, who believes that academic research and current industry knowledge are as critical as textbooks to a student’s education.

Rice Business is consistently recognized for excellence in Finance. We are proud to be ranked #5 Best MBA Program in Finance by Princeton Review this year. There's never been a better time to connect with the finance program at Rice.

Top Finance Electives

Below are some of the most popular finance courses that cover a broad range of topics in finance.

Study of how investors, financial analysts, creditors and managers use financial statement information in evaluating firm performance and in valuing firms. Emphasizes industry and firm-level analysis of accounting information using financial accounting concepts and finance theory.
The content of this course is a microeconomic focus on the functioning and structure of financial markets and financial institutions. By the end of the course, students will be able to describe how information asymmetry problems affect financial transactions and market outcomes, analyze different financial market structures and understand how no-arbitrage concepts apply to valuation tasks. We will study how firms raise external capital to fund investment in real assets and how markets and financial intermediaries assist in this. We will learn many of the details that are assumed away in other core courses. This class will help you see how corporate finance and investments fit together as a cohesive whole.
An introduction to forward, futures, option, and swap contracts, including the basic valuation principles, the use of these contracts for hedging financial risk, and an analysis of option-like investment decisions. Recommended for finance students.
This course offers a review of classic investment theory with an emphasis on measuring and managing investment risk and return. It covers the development of modern portfolio theory and asset pricing models, an introduction to option and futures contracts, market efficiency and stock valuation. Recommended for most finance students.
This course examines the investment decisions faced by corporate financial managers. We begin by developing a general framework for corporate valuation, and then we use this framework to review and expand on the capital budgeting issues developed in the core finance course. For example, we review the foundations of option valuation, and then apply these tools to value real options. We also cover new material on estimating the cost of capital and the effects of leverage. In this course, you will learn the state of the art in the analysis of corporate investment decisions. The course format is a mixture of theory, empirical evidence, and practical application. The theory provides the framework for our analysis. The empirical evidence provides a core of stylized facts to support our theoretical intuition. And, the practical applications put to use the theoretical foundations and empirical evidence in real world decision making.
Study of the theory and practice of the fundamental principles in finance emphasizing hands-on experience with a wide range of corporate finance and investments applications. The course provides extensive opportunity to implement finance theory at a practical level and to develop advanced analytical spreadsheet expertise.
The course examines the merger and acquisition process from the perspectives of buyers and sellers. Attention is paid to the internal (make) versus external (buy) growth opportunities and their value consequences. The course also analyzes the M&A transaction process through the study of cases. An additional focus will be in the interaction of strategic planning, value planning, financial strategies and investment decisions.
This course has two primary objectives: 1) to provide an overview of the fundamental frameworks commonly used in the real estate industry, and 2) to provide a detailed understanding of the discounted cash flow (DCF) model, the primary quantitative financial decision tool used in the real estate industry. Students will learn how to build robust DCF models incorporating important features and conventions for application to real estate assets.
This course is about learning to think like a game theorist and developing a systematic way to evaluate strategic problems. Emphasis is on real-world applications and in-class business exercises.
Houstonians know every boom inevitably leads to a bust. From Enron to Lyondell to American Airlines, discover how to create value through corporate restructuring. Learn why companies fail, distressed M&A bidding strategies, insolvency versus illiquidity, diamond-in-the-rough versus fool’s gold, fraudulent transfer risks, distressed valuation, credit default swaps, and much more.