CERF at 25: milestone is celebrated at Cambridge Judge

Bart Lambrecht, Professor of Finance at Cambridge Judge and Director of CERF, presented a review of CERF’s activities over the past 25 years. He noted that finance was a topic in its infancy at Cambridge when CERF was founded in May 2001 to, in the words of the Cambridge Reporter, support “research and study into all aspects of finance financial institutions, and financial markets, and their relationship with the performance of the economy”.

Bart noted that CERF’s perpetual endowment allowed it the “luxury of a long horizon” that has supported PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, fellows, honorary emeritus professors and an alumni society. CERF has supported many researchers and established a community within the University of Cambridge where researchers with an interest in finance actively engage with one another.

Of 286 published research projects associated with CERF over the past 25 years, the highest total at 87 involved asset pricing and markets, followed (in no particular order) by banking, credit regulation, household and family finance, sustainability, corporate finance, macroeconomics and international finance. The focus has evolved over time, with environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues becoming more prominent in recent years.

CERF is the major funding body for research in finance throughout the University of Cambridge, and provides administrative and financial support to the Cambridge Centre for Finance, one of the research centres at Cambridge Judge Business School.

Why multidisciplinary finance research matters: insights from CERF’s 25-year journey

Deborah Prentice commented on how CERF underlines the “fundamental insight that finance can’t be considered in isolation” but requires a multidisciplinary approach, and how CERF’s success reflects “an example of the magic of Cambridge” in bringing people together from different fields to focus on important issues. She also praised how CERF had evolved over the past 25 years: “It’s not easy to keep something going, and keep it growing, and keep it developing”.

Gishan reminisced how, from his time as a relatively junior University of Cambridge faculty member at the time of CERF’s founding, he has seen finance soar in importance as an academic discipline at the University. “Looking back it’s amazing what transformation has taken place,” he said. “Finance as an area was then not necessarily core, but 25 years on the situation is very different.”

William Janeway said that CERF’s creation was a “generation in the making” and reflected a recognition that a cross-disciplinary approach was necessary to examine finance in the context of theoretical analysis, economic consequences of financial behaviour and operational realities. “The financial crisis of 2008 stamped the intersection of finance and economics,” he said, adding that “where we are now is an extraordinarily exciting moment” in which the work of CERF has never been more important in helping an understanding of how finance fits more broadly into 21st century society.

The generosity of William Janeway and his wife Weslie were instrumental to CERF’s founding. Bill received a PhD in Economics from the University of Cambridge, where his doctoral thesis focused on the formulation of economic policy following the Great Crash of 1929, before starting a decades-long career as a venture capitalist.

Dame Sandra Dawson, a former Director of Cambridge Judge, said the Business School was a natural home for CERF because Cambridge Judge embraces many disciplines including macroeconomics, the political economy and the key role of technology and entrepreneurship. The Business School’s approach “embraces sociology, leadership, government, philosophical debates about freedom and an appreciation of the role of history”.

Key finance research topics presented at the CERF 25th anniversary conference

The CERF conference featured panel discussions and presentations by current and former CERF researchers on a variety of topics, including: