PhD
Welcome to the Università della Svizzera italiana (USI) in Lugano and thank you for your interest in pursuing a PhD in Finance at our school. A PhD in Finance is an exciting and life-changing experience.
The PhD program in Finance is targeted towards the pursuit of academic excellence. The program is part of the internationally recognized Swiss Finance Institute (SFI) PhD program. The goal of the program is to train prospective scholars to become highly skilled and innovative researchers and teachers, and to prepare them for careers at leading institutions throughout the world. It aims at providing an intellectual environment and a curriculum comparable with the top PhD programs in Europe and North America.
The program covers a wide range of subjects including corporate finance, risk management, corporate governance, asset pricing, asset management, banking, microstructure, and financial econometrics. Enrolled students interact closely with our top-tier faculty throughout the program. Applicants should thus have a strong interest in research, and the desire to evolve in an intellectually stimulating and pleasant environment, and the ambition to pursue an academic career or to continue their career doing research in Finance within the public or private sector.
Over the last few years, our students have been placed either in the industry or in premier academic institutions such as Northwestern University (USA), London School of Economics (UK), Rice University (USA), the University of Oxford (UK), or Johns Hopkins University (USA).