An academic career in Finance, from Lugano to Lisbona

Virginia Gianinazzi (image: Vanni Gianinazzi)
Virginia Gianinazzi (image: Vanni Gianinazzi)

Institutional Communication Service

21 July 2020

Lugano, St. Gallen, Barcelona, Lugano, New York, Lugano, Lisbon... these are the steps along the  academic career path of Virginia Gianinazzi, who has recently obtained her PhD in finance at USI and who will soon join the Nova School of Business and Economics in Lisbon as Assistant Professor. In addition to this, her research work has just been awarded by the journal Review of Asset Pricing Studies.

At the USI Institute of Finance (IFin, Faculty of Economics), which is also home to the Swiss Finance Institute (SFI) for the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, a number of graduates have successfully pursued careers in academia, like – to name just one – Ilaria Piatti, USI alumna and today tenured professor at the Saïd Business School in Oxford (www.usi.ch/en/feeds/4466). Virginia says, "After graduating from high school in Lugano, I began my studies in the field of economics, starting with a Bachelor's degree at the University of St. Gallen, continuing with a Master's degree at the Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, and completing them with a PhD in finance at USI. During my doctoral studies in Lugano, I obtained a mobility grant from the Swiss National Fund, which in my case led me to further my studies and research for a full year in the United States at NYU Stern School of Business. Now, after defending my doctoral thesis, under the direction of Prof. Alberto Plazzi, I will leave for Lisbon where I accepted an offer for the position of assistant professor in the Department of Finance at the Nova School of Business and Economics".

The main study and research interests of Virginia are in household finance, empirical asset pricing and financial markets (financial intermediation). Recently, a research paper co-authored with her colleague Dr. Andrea Barbon, who also holds a PhD in finance from USI, on the effects of the interventions of the Bank of Japan on the prices of Japanese shares, received the "Rising Scholar Award 2020" from the US scientific journal Review of Asset Pricing Studies (RAPS). A short report on the paper "Quantitative Easing and Equity Prices: Evidence from the ETF Program of the Bank of Japan" was made two years ago by the university student newspaper L'universo (https://luniverso.com/finanza-gianinazzi/). "The work I did with my colleague Andrea was first presented at the annual conference of the American Finance Association and the American Economic Association held in Philadelphia in early 2018," says Virginia. "The issue of quantitative easing is very much felt in academia as well as in politics, especially after the global financial crisis of 2008. The Bank of Japan was the first central bank in a G7 country to make purchases of equities - through Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) – to support its economy. The amount of data that can be analysed as a result of these interventions, which began in 2013, was crucial to study their effectiveness: the article finds a so-called "persistent effect", i.e. without major reversals on the upward trend of the Japanese Stock Exchange," Virginia explains.