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Financial Markets Group

Pre-Doctoral Research Assistant in Finance

Salary from £33,558 to £38,541 pa inclusive with potential to progress to £41,404 pa inclusive

of London allowance

This is a fixed term appointment for 1 year

Starting date negotiable

The Financial Markets Group (FMG) is a leading research centre in Finance. Research at the FMG examines how stable and efficient the financial system is, how it supports the real economy, and what policy measures can generate improvements in these dimensions. The FMG is involved in cutting-edge research, teaching students and engaging a global audience.

The FMG invites applications for a Pre-Doctoral Research Assistant. The successful applicant will be highly-skilled and motivated, and will closely collaborate with Kim Fe Cramer, Cameron Peng and Dimitri Vayanos on various projects that involve theoretical and empirical work. Projects on financial intermediation and the real economy (Cramer) include the role of banks and fintech in developing countries; and how financial systems affect climate change adaptation. Projects on behavioural finance (Peng) include the formation of beliefs among retail and institutional investors and their impact on trading behaviour and asset prices; bargaining among individuals with heterogeneous preferences and beliefs; and the role of memory and other psychological forces in financial decision-making. Projects on frictional capital markets (Vayanos) include the measurement of capital flows to mutual funds and asset management firms, and the flows’ asset pricing effects; dynamic contracting in asset management in asset market equilibrium; and open economy macroeconomic models with imperfect capital markets.

The successful applicant will be involved in many aspects of the projects, including literature reviews; data collection, cleaning and merging; statistical analysis; and numerical analysis and model calibration.

Candidates should have a Bachelor’s and/or Master’s degree in Economics, Maths, Computer Science, Statistics, or other closely related disciplines, with substantial quantitative work; experience with statistical software Stata and programming languages, such as Matlab, Python and Julia; and Latex.

They should take initiative in pursuing the activities and objectives of the research projects; be able to communicate effectively and confidently at all levels and to different audience; have excellent writing skills and some experience producing written outputs for a variety of audiences; be able to convey complex technical information in a clear and accurate manner; be fluent in written and spoken English.

They should be able to manage own areas of responsibility independently and as a member of a team; have long-term interest in pursuing research in economics; work under pressure and to multiple deadlines; have a high-level of initiative and self-motivation and a proactive and flexible approach to work.

We offer an occupational pension scheme, generous annual leave, hybrid working, and excellent training and development opportunities.

For further information about the post, please see the how to apply document, job description and the person specification.

To apply for this post, please go to www.jobs.lse.ac.uk. If you have any technical queries with applying on the online system, please use the “contact us” links at the bottom of the LSE Jobs page. Should you have any queries about the role, please email d.vayanos@lse.ac.uk.