Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR)

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 Mayo Center for Asset Management. Now in its twelfth year, the conference has grown in global stature and selectivity, with a current paper acceptance rate of just 4%. 

Over the past decade, 122 papers have been presented and discussed at CFMR. Of these, 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.

                                                                                                                                                                       

12th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2025):

📍 Location: SEC Headquarters, Washington, DC
📅 Dates: Thursday, May 15 – Friday, May 16, 2025       

🖥 Attend the Conference: Register Here (registration deadline is May 9)

PROGRAM

📅 THURSDAY, MAY 15, 2025

🕧 12:30 – 1:00 PM | Registration

🕐 1:00 – 1:15 PM | Opening Remarks

🔹 Speaker: TBA (SEC)

🕐 1:15 – 1:30 PM | Welcome

📌 1:30 – 3:00 PM | Enforcement Track

Session Chair: Eugene Canjels (SEC)

• Centralized Governance in Decentralized Organizations
  Lin William Cong (Cornell University), Daniel Rabetti (National University of Singapore), Yu Yan (Cornell University). Charles Wang (Harvard University)
  💬 Discussant: Jillian Grennan (Emory University)

• Enforcement Policy, Disclosure Regulation, and Investment Efficiency
  Yiying Chen (University of Texas at Austin)
  💬 Discussant: Nadya Malenko (Boston College)

☕ 3:00 – 3:15 PM | Break

📌 3:15 – 5:15 PM | SEC Research Track

Session Chair: Amy Edwards (SEC)

• Hedge Fund Liquidity Management: Insights for Fund Performance and Financial Stability
  George Aragon (SEC & Arizona State University), A. Tolga Ergun (SEC), Giulio Girardi (SEC)
  💬 Discussant: Daniel Barth (Federal Reserve Board)

• 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)
  💬 Discussant: Thomas Ernst (University of Maryland)

• 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)
  💬 Discussant: Bastian von Beschwitz (Federal Reserve Board)

🍸 5:30 – 6:00 PM | Pre-Dinner Reception

📍 Location: The Monocle Restaurant, 107 D Street, NE, Washington, DC

🍽 6:00 – 8:00 PM | Dinner

📍 Location: The Monocle

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📅 FRIDAY, MAY 16, 2025

☕ 8:00 – 8:45 AM | Registration & Continental Breakfast

🗣 8:45 – 9:00 AM | Opening Remarks

🔹 Speaker: Commissioner Mark Uyeda (SEC)

📌 9:00 – 10:30 AM | Corporate Finance Track

Session Chair: Albert Sheen (SEC)

• The Effects of Additional Mandatory Repurchase Disclosure: Evidence from a Natural Experiment
  Elliot Tobin (Harvard University)
  💬 Discussant: Alice Bonaime (University of Arizona)

• 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)
  💬 Discussant: Mattias Nilsson (SEC)

☕ 10:30 – 11:00 AM | Break

📌 11:00 – 12:30 PM | Market Microstructure Track

Session Chair: Marc Lipson (University of Virginia)

• Market Power in the Securities Lending Market
  Shuaiyu Chen (Purdue University), Ron Kaniel (University of Rochester), Christian Opp (University of Rochester)
  💬 Discussant: Spencer Andrews (Office of Financial Research)

• 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)
  💬 Discussant: Jeogmin “Mina” Lee (Federal Reserve Board)

🎤 12:30 – 2:00 PM | Lunch Keynote Address

🔹 Speaker: Commissioner Hester Peirce (SEC)

📌 2:00 – 3:30 PM | Financial Intermediary Track

Session Chair: Alberto Rossi (Georgetown 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)
  💬 Discussant: Vlad Ivanov (SEC)

• Rising Investor Sophistication and Declining Profitability in Municipal Bond Underwriting
  John Hund (University of Georgia), Christian Lundblad (UNC-Chapel Hill), Christos Makridis (University of Nicosia & Stanford University), Giang Nguyen (Penn State University)
  💬 Discussant: Stanislava (Stas) Nikolova (University of Nebraska)

☕ 3:30 – 4:00 PM | Break

📌 4:00 – 5:30 PM | Asset Management Track

Session Chair: Ke Shen (Lehigh University)

• Index Disruption: The Promise and Pitfalls of Self-Indexed ETFs
  Bige Kahraman (University of Oxford), Sida Li (Brandeis University), Anthony Limburg (University of Oxford)
  💬 Discussant: Richard Evans (University of Virginia)

• 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)
  💬 Discussant: Pedro Matos (University of Virginia)

🗣 5:30 – 5:45 PM | Closing Remarks

🔹 Speaker: Commissioner Caroline Crenshaw (SEC)

🍹 5:45 – 7:00 PM | Informal SEC Reception

Conference Organizers: Kathleen Weiss Hanley (Lehigh University), Amy Edwards (SEC), Vlad Ivanov (SEC), and Pedro Matos (University of Virginia)

                                                                                                                                                                       

                     11th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2025):

The SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), Lehigh University’s Center for Financial Services (CFS), and University of Maryland’s Center for Financial Policy (CFP) jointly hosted the 11th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2024) on Thursday, May 9 and Friday, May 10, 2024. The goal of the conference is to bring together participants from academia, industry, government, and the SEC for an exchange of views on topics of relevance to the Commission.

SEC Chair Gary Gensler and SEC Chief Economist Jessica Wachter gave the opening remarks. SEC Commissioner Jaime Lizárraga provided remarks on the second day and SEC Commissioner Mark Uyeda delivered the keynote address.

Papers presented 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)

Conference Organizers: Kathleen Weiss Hanley (Lehigh University), Amy Edwards (SEC), Vlad Ivanov (SEC), and Russ Wermers (University of Maryland)

                                                                                                                                                                       

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

The SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), Lehigh University’s Center for Financial Services (CFS), and University of Maryland’s Center for Financial Policy (CFP) jointly hosted the 10th Annual Conference on Financial Market Regulation (CFMR 2023) on Thursday, May 4 and Friday, May 5, 2023. The goal of the conference is to bring together participants from academia, industry, government, and the SEC for an exchange of views on topics of relevance to the Commission.

Prof. Kathleen Hanley, who has been an organizer for the past decade, welcomed attendees to the CFMR 2023. SEC Chair Gary Gensler gave opening remarks and SEC Chief Economist Jessica Wachter delivered the keynote address.

Papers presented at the CFMR 2023:

Corporate Bond Flipping Stanislava (Stas) Nikolova (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), Liying Wang (University of Nebraska-Lincoln)

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)

Conference Organizers: Kathleen Weiss Hanley (Lehigh University), Amy Edwards (SEC), Vlad Ivanov (SEC), and Russ Wermers (University of Maryland)

                                                                                                                                                                       

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

The SEC’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), Lehigh University’s Center for Financial Services (CFS), University of Maryland’s Center for Financial Policy (CFP), and CFA Institute jointly hosted the virtual CFMR 2022 on Friday, May 6, 2022. 

SEC Chief Economist Jessica Wachter welcomed attendees to the CFMR 2022. SEC Chair Gary Gensler gave opening remarks and SEC Commissioner Allison Herren Lee delivered the keynote address.

Papers presented 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)

                                                                                                                                                                       

Papers presented at the CFMR 2020:

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)

Recording from day 1 of the conference - September 17, 2020.

Recording from day 2 of the conference - September 18, 2020.