2010 FIRS Conference ~ June 7-9, 2010 ~ Florence, Italy

After four successful conferences (Capri 2004, Shanghai 2006, Anchorage 2008, Prague 2009), FIRS is pleased to announce that the next conference will be held at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, on June 7-9, 2010. We are delighted that Professor Bengt Holmstrom of MIT has agreed to be the Academic Keynote Speaker.

The format resembles that of the Western Finance Association conferences, which cover a broad range of topics in parallel sessions. The topics will include banking, corporate finance, asset pricing, market microstructure, insurance, securitization and other topics. Both theoretical and empirical papers are encouraged. It is anticipated that most of the participants will be from universities, central banks, regulatory agencies, and international organizations.

In addition to the regular sessions, there will be four special sessions on the Financial Crisis co-sponsored by the Journal of Financial Intermediation. Authors submitting to FIRS should indicate whether they want their paper considered for these JFI-FIRS special sessions and also whether they would like their paper considered for publication in a special issue of the JFI. Papers intending to submit to the journal will have a preference for being accepted at these special sessions and will have their JFI submission fees waived. Submissions not accepted in these special sessions will still be considered for a regular session.

The program co-chairs are Franklin Allen (University of Pennsylvania) and Elena Carletti (European University Institute). Papers will be blindly reviewed by a Program Committee consisting of leading researchers. The submission deadline is October 25, 2009, and submission fee is $45. Please submit your paper in the form of an anonymous PDF file, which has removed the author information usually contained on a cover page, as well as Adobe's identification of the author. Authors will be notified of the Program Committee's decision by February 8, 2010.

Questions may be addressed to firs2010@eui.eu.