Wu Lauded for Corporate Bond Research

By Jacqueline Molik Ghosen

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Chunchi Wu, M&T Professor of Banking and Finance in the University at Buffalo School of Management, was honored with the 2011 Peter L. Bernstein Award, in recognition of his research paper on corporate bonds.

The award, given for extraordinary and compelling research published in any of Institutional Investor’s 10 market-leading journals, is named for the celebrated economic historian, consultant, founding editor of The Journal of Portfolio Management and author of seminal works including “Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk” and “Capital Ideas: The Improbable Origins of Modern Wall Street.”

Wu’s article, Dissecting Corporate Bond and CDS Spreads, appeared in the winter 2011 issue of The Journal of Fixed Income.

The paper was chosen through a blind review process by an independent committee that included Gary Gastineau of ETF Consultants LLC, William Goetzmann of the Yale School of Management and Ronald Kahn of Blackrock.

“Dissecting Corporate Bonds and CDS Spreads is a major contribution to the understanding of credit markets,” Goetzmann says. “It is an extremely informative and useful article that resolves a long-standing puzzle in the discrepancy between theoretical models of credit and observed empirical data.” Kahn calls the article “a technical tour-de-force leading to intuitive and insightful results—the type of paper Peter Bernstein always appreciated.”

“I am extremely pleased to congratulate Professor Wu for the Bernstein award, which acknowledges superior research,” says Arjang Assad, dean of the School of Management. “This honor is yet another illustration of the School of Management’s global reputation for influential scholarship.”

Wu shares the $5,000 award with the article’s co-authors, Hai Lin, senior lecturer at the School of Business at New Zealand’s University of Otago, and Sheen Liu, associate professor in the Department of Finance and Decision Sciences at Washington State University.

Institutional Investor Journals offer in-depth, original, and practical research in key areas of investment management and finance including fixed income, index investing, derivatives, trading, private equity, portfolio management, structured finance, and wealth management. Written and edited by world-renowned practitioners and academics, the journals are extensively read and highly regarded in the industry.

The UB School of Management is recognized for its emphasis on real-world learning, community and economic impact, and the global perspective of its faculty, students and alumni. The school has been ranked by Bloomberg Businessweek, the Financial Times, Forbes, U.S. News & World Report and The Wall Street Journal for the quality of its programs and the return on investment it provides its graduates. For more information about the UB School of Management, visit mgt.buffalo.edu.

The University at Buffalo is a premier research-intensive public university, a flagship institution in the State University of New York system and its largest and most comprehensive campus. UB’s more than 28,000 students pursue their academic interests through more than 300 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs. Founded in 1846, the University at Buffalo is a member of the Association of American Universities.