Brandes Investment Partners and the Rady School of Management’s Brandes Center Announce $25,000 Call for Papers Contest Winners
Authors of Winning Papers Urge Thoughtful Review of ESG Practices and Caution Retail Investors on Social Media Use
The Brandes Center, an investment research center at the UC San Diego Rady School of Management, today announced two winners in its academic Call for Papers contest:
- Among professors, Dr. Samuel Hartzmark and Dr. Kelly Shue won for their manuscript, “Counterproductive Sustainable Investing.”
- Among Ph.D. candidates, Dr. Liran Eliner and Botir Kobilov won for their manuscript, “Do Retail Investors Profit from Social Media-Induced Trading?”
The contest underscores the mission of The Brandes Center as a dedicated, value-added research center within the UC San Diego ecosystem focused on building a better understanding of sound investing as well as behavioral finance.
The winning authors will split the $25,000 prize — $13,000 to the professors and the remaining balance to the Ph.D. candidates. Brandes Investment Partners provided the prize money for the winning authors.
Hartzmark is a Professor of Finance and Hillenbrand Family Faculty Fellow at Boston College. Shue is a Professor of Finance at the Yale School of Management. The authors analyze the impacts of investment tactics that direct capital away from so-called “brown” firms in hopes of forcing them to become more “green.” The team find such efforts “…makes brown firms more brown without making green firms more green.” They also write, “Due to a mistaken focus on percentage reductions in emissions, the sustainable investing movement primarily rewards green firms for economically trivial reductions in their already low levels of emissions.” To read their prize-winning entry, visit this link.
Eliner is the founder & CEO of Cache and a Research Associate at the Digital Value Lab within the Digital, Data and Design Institute at Harvard University. Kobilov is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate at Harvard Business School. The authors show that social media sentiment induces retail trading more than any of the classic “attention grabbing events”, including abnormal returns, abnormal trading volume or traditional news coverage. They further document that retail traders who trade based on social media sentiment lose money at both the trade and portfolio levels. They attribute such losses to “poor market timing and behavioral biases, such as the disposition effect.”
“We are delighted to collaborate with The Brandes Center at the UC San Diego Rady School of Management on this year’s Call for Papers contest,” said Oliver Murray, Managing Director, Brandes Investment Partners. “This is the first year for The Brandes Center to oversee the contest, evaluate the submissions, and select the winners. Providing the prize money is a good example of our commitment to foster academic dialogue around important topics for our industry.”
About The Brandes Center
The Brandes Center, which opened in 2022 thanks to the philanthropic vision of Charles and Renée Brandes, examines potential investment approaches that arise from structural and behavioral factors in global markets. The Center’s research seeks to uncover investment strategies that may address long-term needs for institutional and individual investors. As a dedicated, value-added research center within the UC San Diego ecosystem, the Center strives to strengthen the link between scholarly theory and practical application, bringing to life the Rady School of Management’s vision of “ideas to impact.”
About Brandes Investment Partners
Brandes is a leading investment advisory firm, managing global equity and fixed-income assets for clients worldwide. Since the firm’s inception in 1974, Brandes has consistently applied the value investing approach pioneered by Benjamin Graham to security selection and was among the first investment firms to invest globally using a value approach. The independently owned firm manages a variety of active investment strategies and applies its investment philosophy consistently in all market conditions. Headquartered in San Diego, Brandes and its related entities have offices in Milwaukee, Toronto, Dublin and Singapore. Brandes Investment Partners is not affiliated with the University of California.
