Archives: News

Guidelines for the AFA Rookie Recruiting Cycle

The AFA rookie job market cycle of 2021-2022 created uncertainty, confusion, and unneeded stress for job market candidates and for recruiters. In the interest of developing a more coordinated job market that benefits all involved, the AFA Board has the following suggested guidelines.

Timing of interviews:

Initial interviews can be virtual or in person, but the AFA recommends that the initial interviews should not begin before December 15, 2022, and that the timing of the “campus visit” should occur after the AFA meeting.

Timing of job offers:

In order to facilitate the best matching between candidates and positions, the AFA Board believes strongly that job offers should remain open until at least February 20. The AFA Board also encourages employers to abstain from giving exploding offers with too short of a time frame, since they are unfair to the candidates. Consequently, the AFA promotes the following professional norm: If a job candidate receives and accepts a coercive exploding offer (i.e., one that expires before February 20), the AFA does not consider such an acceptance to be binding.

These guidelines are designed for the AFA rookie recruiting cycle and do not pertain to recruiting cycles for other job markets such as the FMA or European job markets.

Transition to New AFA Executive Secretary and Treasurer

The AFA is pleased to announce that Kathleen Weiss Hanley has accepted the role of AFA Executive Secretary and Treasurer (EST).  From July 1, 2022 until June 30, 2023, Professor Hanley will work alongside current EST Jim Schallheim.  Beginning July 1, 2023, Professor Hanley will assume the office of EST.

Professor Hanley holds the position of Bolton-Perella Endowed Chair in Finance at Lehigh University and is the Director of the Center for Financial Services.  From 2011 to 2013, she was the Deputy Chief Economist of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Prior to that time, she was a Senior Economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and a Senior Financial Economist at the SEC. She has also been on the faculty of the University of Maryland and the University of Michigan.

Professor Hanley currently serves as the co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Finance, and as an associate editor of both the Journal of Accounting and Public Policy and the Journal of Financial Services Research. Her research focuses on capital formation and market pricing and has been published in leading finance journals such as The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Accounting and Economics, and the Journal of Accounting Research.

Sad news: David Mayers, Co-Editor of the Journal of Finance (1988-1995), Passed Away

David Mayers was professor emeritus of finance at UC Riverside’s School of Business. He received his Ph.D. in business administration from the University of Rochester, his M.B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.S. in engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis.

Dave Mayers served as co-editor of the Journal of Finance from 1988-1995 during his time as the Arthur E. Shepard Professor of Insurance at Ohio State University (1986 to 1995). He is remembered by colleagues at OSU as helping OSU finance take major strides forward. He had a considerable impact on the Ph.D. program and on the general culture of the department there.

In his research, Dave will be remembered for introducing non-marketable assets (such as human capital) in the CAPM, for some of the earliest research on block trades,  and for a considerable body of work on the insurance industry . His most cited paper, “On the corporate demand for insurance”, co-authored with Cliff Smith, derives conditions under which firms will hold insurance contracts. He will be missed.