Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR)

📘 Conference Overview
The Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR) began accepting paper submissions in 2013, with the inaugural conference held in the spring of 2014. It is co-hosted by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), Lehigh University’s Center for Financial Services (CFS), and the University of Virginia’s Richard A. Mayo Center for Asset Management (Mayo Center). Now in its thirteenth year, the conference has grown in global stature and selectivity, with a current paper acceptance rate of just 4%.

🌍 Conference Impact
Over the past decade, more than 150 papers have been presented and discussed at the CFMR. Of these, over 40% have been published in leading academic journals, including the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, Management Science, Review of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Review of Asset Pricing Studies, as well as in influential publications such as The Economist.

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📢 13th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2026) Call for Papers

📅 Conference Dates: The conference will take place in the afternoon on Thursday, May 7, and all day on Friday, May 8, 2026 
 
📍 Location: SEC Headquarters, Washington, DC
 
⏰ Paper Submission Deadline: November 18, 2025
 
📄 Conference Details: The Securities and Exchange Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), the Lehigh University Center for Financial Services (CFS), and the University of Virginia Richard A. Mayo Center for Asset Management (Mayo Center) will jointly host the 13th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2026). The goal of the conference is to bring together participants to exchange views on issues relevant to the Commission.
 
Two papers will be selected in each of the five topic areas: asset management, corporate finance, enforcement, financial intermediation, and market microstructure and trading. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Asset Management: investment advisers, ETPs and liquidity (including crypto ETPs), investment companies, hedge funds, and other institutional investors, and custody.
• Corporate Finance: corporate disclosures, initial public offerings, seasoned equity offerings, corporate mergers and acquisitions, fintech, corporate governance and voting, corporate and municipal debt offerings, and disclosures related to asset-backed securities and digital assets.
• Enforcement: compliance, fraud detection, whistleblower, penalties, deterrence, measurement of damages, AAERs, manipulation, Ponzi schemes, false disclosure, and insider trading.
• Intermediaries: broker-dealers, financial institutions, analysts affiliated with broker-dealers or financial institutions, clearing agencies, central counterparties, credit ratings, and Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organizations (NRSROs).
• Market Microstructure and Trading: the structure, transparency, fairness, efficiency, and liquidity of secondary market trading in the equity, ETP, bond, option, security-based swap, digital assets, and securities lending markets.

The deadline for paper submissions is November 18, 2025, with a submission fee of $50. Papers can be submitted through ConfTool (www.conftool.org/cfmr2026).
 
The selection committee will prioritize high-quality paper submissions that align with the SEC's mission. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by early February. While travel expenses are the responsibility of the presenter, the conference fee will be waived.
  
👥 Conference Organizers: Kathleen Weiss Hanley (Lehigh University), Amy Edwards (SEC), Vlad Ivanov (SEC), and Ian Appel (University of Virginia)

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🌟 Thank you to everyone who participated and contributed to the success of the CFMR 2025!

🏛️ This past May, DERA, the CFS, and the Mayo Center hosted the 12th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2025) at the SEC Headquarters in Washington, DC.

The conference featured remarks from several SEC leaders:

• Chair Paul Atkins
• Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw
• Commissioner Hester Peirce
• Commissioner Mark Uyeda

📚 Papers presented and discussed at the CFMR 2025:

• Centralized Governance in Decentralized Organizations Lin William Cong (Cornell University), Daniel Rabetti (National University of Singapore), Yu Yan (Cornell University), Charles Wang (Harvard University)
• Democratizing Private Markets: Private Equity Performance of Individual Investors Cynthia Mei Balloch (London School of Economics), Federico Mainardi (University of Chicago), Sangmin Oh (Columbia University), Petra Vokata (The Ohio State University)
• Enforcement Policy, Disclosure Regulation, and Investment EfficiencyYiying Chen (University of Texas at Austin)
• Hedge Fund Liquidity Management: Insights for Fund Performance and Financial Stability George Aragon (SEC and Arizona State University), A. Tolga Ergun (SEC), Giulio Girardi (SEC)
• How Does Payment for Order Flow Influence Markets? Evidence from Robinhood Crypto Token Introductions Thomas Boulton (Miami University), Thomas Shohfi (Wayne State University), Michael Walz (SEC)
• Index Disruption: The Promise and Pitfalls of Self-Indexed ETFs Bige Kahraman (University of Oxford), Sida Li (Brandies University), Anthony Limburg (University of Oxford)
• Market Power in the Securities Lending Market Shuaiyu Chen (Purdue University), Ron Kaniel (University of Rochester), Christian Opp (University of Rochester)
• Rising Investor Sophistication and Declining Profitability in Municipal Bond Underwriting John Hund (University of Georgia), Christian Lundblad (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Christos Makridis (University of Nicosia and Stanford University), Giang Nguyen (Penn State University)
• The Economics of Greenwashing Funds Sean Cao (University of Maryland), Yong Chen (Texas A&M University), Han Xiao (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Alan Zhang (Florida International University)
• The Effects of Additional Mandatory Repurchase Disclosure: Evidence from a Natural Experiment Elliot Tobin (Harvard University)
• The Effects of Human Capital Disclosures on Professional Investors’ Assessments of Firm Risk Robert Jennings (University of Arizona), Lisa LaViers (Tulane University), Ethan Rouen (Harvard University), Jason Sandvik (University of Arizona)
• What Does Best Execution Look Like? Thomas Ernst (University of Maryland), Andrey Malenko (Boston College), Chester Spatt (Carnegie Mellon University), Jian Sun (Singapore Management University)
• You Can Only Lend What You Own: Inferring Daily Institutional Trading from Security Lending Supply Yashar Barardehi (Chapman University), Zhi Da (University of Notre Dame), Peter Dixon (SEC), Junbo Wang (Louisiana State University)

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11th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2024):

🏛️ On May 9-10, 2024, DERA, the CFS, and the CFP hosted the 11th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2024) at the SEC Headquarters in Washington, DC.

The conference featured remarks from several SEC leaders:

• Chair Gary Gensler
• Commissioner Jaime Lizárraga
• Commissioner Mark Uyeda
• Chief Economist Jessica Wachter 

📚 Papers presented and discussed at the CFMR 2024:

• Anticompetitive Price Referencing Vincent van Kervel (Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile), Bart Zhou Yueshen (Singapore Management University)
• A Simple Role for Complex Options Su Li (SEC), David Musto (University of Pennsylvania), Neil Pearson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• Bloated Disclosures: Can ChatGPT Help Investors Process Information? Alex Kim (University of Chicago), Maximilian Muhn (University of Chicago), Valeri Nikolaev (University of Chicago)
• Catering through Transparency: Voluntary ESG Disclosure by Asset Managers and Fund Flows Marco Ceccarelli (VU Amsterdam), Simon Glossner (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System), Mikael Homanen (City University London)
• Detecting Informed Trading Risk from Undercutting Activity in Limit Order Markets Yashar Barardehi (Chapman University), Peter Dixon (SEC), Qiyu Liu (SEC)
• Detecting the Risk of Cross-Product Manipulation in the EUREX Fixed Income Futures Market Kaveesha Dilshani (University of Technology Sydney), Andy Guo (University of Technology Sydney), Peter Mere (Macquarie University), Alexis Stenfors (University of Portsmouth-UK)
• Does High Frequency Market Manipulation Harm Market Quality? Jonathan Brogaard (University of Utah), Dan Li (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Jeffrey Yang (University of Utah)
• Does Sustainable Investing Make Stocks Less Sensitive to Information about Cash Flows? Steffen Hitzemann (University of Houston), An Qin (Rutgers University)
• Intermediary Balance Sheet Constraints, Bond Mutual Funds’ Strategies, and Bond Returns Mariassunta Giannetti (Stockholm School of Economics), Chotibhak Jotikasthira (Southern Methodist University), Andreas Rapp (Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System), Martin Waibel (Stockholm School of Economics)
• Learning from DeFi: Would Automated Market Makers Improve Equity Trading? Katya Malinova (McMaster University), Andreas Park (University of Toronto)
• Political Uncertainty and Capital Raising Through Private Offerings Vladimir Ivanov (SEC), Matthew Wynter (Stony Brook University)
• Spreading Sunshine in Private Equity: Agency Costs and Financial Disintermediation Yingxiang Li (University of British Columbia)
• The Dodd-Frank Act and Hedge Fund Operational Risk William Goetzmann (Yale University), Bing Liang (University of Massachusetts),  Jue Wang (University of Massachusetts)

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10th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2023)

🏛️ On May 4-5, 2023, DERA, the CFS, and the CFP hosted the 10th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2023) at the SEC Headquarters in Washington, DC.

The conference featured remarks from SEC leaders:

• Chair Gary Gensler
• Chief Economist Jessica Wachter

📚 Papers presented and discussed at the CFMR 2023:

• Credit Ratings in the Age of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Ruoke Yang (SEC)
• Diversity Washing Andrew Baker (Berkeley Law School), David F. Larcker ((Stanford University), Charles McClure (University of Chicago), Durgesh Saraph (Jump Trading), Edward M. Watts (Yale University)
• Do Hedge Funds Strategically Misreport Their Holdings? Evidence from 13F Restatements Sean Cao (University of Maryland), Zhi Da (University of Notre Dame), Xin (Daniel) Jiang (University of Waterloo), Baozhong Yang (Georgia State University)
• Money in the Right Hands Aleksandra Rzeźnik (York University), Rüdiger Weber (Vienna University of Economics and Business)
• Relationship Discounts in Corporate Bond Trading Simon Jurkatis (Bank of England), Andreas Schrimpf (Aarhus University; Bank for International Settlements), Karamfil Todorov (Bank for International Settlements), Nicholas Vause (Bank of England)
• The Incentives of SPAC Sponsors Felix Zhiyu Feng (University of Washington), Tom Nohel (Loyola University of Chicago), Xuan Tian (Tsinghua University), Wenyu Wang (Indiana University), Yufeng Wu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
• The Retail Execution Quality Landscape Anne Haubo Dyhrberg (Wilfrid Laurier University),  Andriy Shkilko (Wilfrid Laurier University), Ingrid M. Werner (The Ohio State University)
• Tick Sizes and Market Quality: Revisiting the Tick Size Pilot Yashar Barardehi (Chapman University and SEC), Peter Dixon (SEC), Qiyu Liu (SEC), Ariel Lohr (SEC)
• Uncovering the Liquidity Premium in Stock Returns Using Retail Liquidity Provision Yashar Barardehi (Chapman University and SEC), Dan Bernhardt (University of Illinois and University of Warwick), Zhi Da (University of Notre Dame), Mitch Warachka (Chapman University)
• Would Order-By-Order Auctions Be Competitive? Thomas Ernst (University of Maryland), Chester Spatt (Carnegie Mellon University), Jian Sun (Singapore Management University)

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9th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2022)

🏛️ On May 6, 2022, DERA, the CFS, and the CFP hosted the 9th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2022) virtually.

The conference featured remarks from SEC leaders:

• Chair Gary Gensler
• Commissioner Allison Herren Lee
• Chief Economist Jessica Wachter

📚 Papers presented and discussed at the CFMR 2022:

• Deputization Bruce Carlin (Rice University), Tarik Umar (Rice University), Hanyi (Livia) Yi (Boston College)
• Monetary Policy and the Run Risk of Loan Funds Nicola Cetorelli (Federal Reserve Bank of New York), Gabriele La Spada (Federal Reserve Bank of New York), Joao Santos (Federal Reserve Bank of New York)
• Squeezing Shorts Through Social Media Platforms Franklin Allen (Imperial College), Marlene Haas (Independent Scholar), Eric Nowak (Universita della Svizzera italiana and Swiss Finance Institute), Matteo Pirovano, (Universita della Svizzera italiana and Swiss Finance Institute), Angel Tengulov (University of Kansas)
• The Market Inside the Market: Odd-lot Quotes Robert Bartlett (University of California, Berkeley), Justin McCrary (Columbia University), Maureen O’Hara (Cornell University)
• Index Providers: Whales Behind the Scenes of ETFs Yu An (Johns Hopkins University), Matteo Benetton (University of California, Berkeley), Yang Song (University of Washington)
• The Consequences of Fund-level Liquidity Requirements Indraneel Chakraborty (University of Miami), Elia Ferracuti (Duke University), John Heater (Duke University), Matthew Phillips (University of Miami)
• Does Socially Responsible Investing Change Firm Behavior? Davidson Heath, (University of Utah), Daniele Macciocchi, (University of Miami), Roni Michaely, (University of Hong Kong), Matthew Ringgenberg, (University of Utah)
• Everlasting Fraud Vivian Fang (University of Minnesota), Nan Li (University of Minnesota),
  Wenyu Wang (Indiana University), Gaoqing Zhang (University of Minnesota)

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• Discretionary NAVs Scott Cederburg (University of Arizona) and Neal Stoughton (University of Waterloo)
• Funding Liquidity and Market Liquidity: the Broker-Dealer Perspective Marco Macchiavelli (Federal Reserve Board) and Xing (Alex) Zhou (Federal Reserve Board)
• Periodic Disclosures of Asset-Backed Securities Brent Schmidt (Penn State University) and Helen Zhang (University of Minnesota)
• Phantom of the Opera: ETF Shorting and Shareholder Voting Richard Evans (University of Virginia), Oğuzhan Karakaş (University of Cambridge), Rabih Moussawi (Villanova University), and Michael Young (University of Missouri)
• Should We Use Closing Prices? Institutional Price Pressure at the Close Vincent Bogousslavsky (Boston College) and Dmitriy Muravyev (Michigan State University)
• Sitting Bucks: Zero Returns in Fixed Income Funds Jaewon Choi (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Mathias Kronlund (University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), and Jimmy Oh (Hanyang University)
• Spinning the CEO Pay Ratio Disclosure Audra Boone (Texas Christian University), Austin Starkweather (Vanderbilt University), and Joshua Tyler White (Vanderbilt University)
• Violations of Price-Time Priority and Implications for Market Quality
  Seoyoung Kim (Santa Clara University) and Daniel Trepanier (Santa Clara University)