Research Award

About CFA Society Greece's Research Award

CFA Society Greece's Research Award is an annual award that was launched in November 2021 and was awarded for the first time in April 2022.  

The purpose of the Research Award is to distinguish outstanding scientific and empirical research in the fields of investment, finance, economics, business and accounting that are useful for practitioners.

The winning paper is awarded a monetary prize. 

Research Award 2023

CFA Society Greece's 4-member jury evaluated seven (7) papers independently and anonymously for the 2nd Annual Research Award. 

Winning Paper

Enhancement in a Firm's Information Environment via Options Trading and the Efficiency of Corporate Investment

by S. Anagnostopolou, CFA, L. Trigeorgis and A. Tsekrekos

The winning paper, which is published in the Journal of Banking and Finance, examines the association between enhancement in a firm’s information environment via options trading and firm investment efficiency.  Investment inefficiency is partly driven by information asymmetries between firm managers and capital providers, aggravating moral hazard concerns. The authors test whether enhancement in a firm’s information environment through higher volumes of options trading (including a natural experiment involving exogenous shocks via the Penny Pilot Program) is positively related to more efficient firm investment decisions. Their results confirm that enhanced informational efficiency via higher volumes of options trading is positively related to improvements in firm-level investment efficiency. Their findings are in line with the enhancement in the information environment stemming from options trading reducing agency and moral hazard concerns (an agency channel) and are not driven by alternative explanations such as managerial learning from informed traders or the lower cost of capital. Overall, the authors' findings suggest that an enhanced information environment via more options trading benefits firms’ investment decisions.

Download the paper   Press Release

Research Award 2022

Our panel of experts evaluated nine (9) submissions for the 2022 Research Award, ranging in topics from accounting conservatism to cost of capital analysis. 

The winning paper of the first Research Award is Positive stock information in out-of-the-money option prices by Konstantinos Gkionis (UBS), Alexandros Kostakis (University of Liverpool), Georgios Skiadopoulos (University of Piraeus and Queen Mary University of London) and Przemyslaw S. Stilger (Standard Chartered Bank).

In this paper, the authors document that stocks with high risk-neutral skewness outperform, and propose and empirically validate a novel trading mechanism which explains this.  Apart from academics, this research is of interest to investors and portfolio managers. This is manifested by that fact that it attracted the attention of Media, including the Global Investor Group which features it here . Also reproduced by Fintech Zoom. 

Read the full paper