Portrait image for Avanidhar (Subra) Subrahmanyam

Avanidhar (Subra) Subrahmanyam

Distinguished Professor of Finance, Goldyne and Irwin Hearsh Chair in Money and Banking
“The more we learn about our biases, the higher the standard of communication we demand from our leaders. The more we suppress emotional reactions to dramatic events, the better the functioning of our institutions and markets, and the better off we are as a community.”
(310) 825-5355
Areas of Expertise:
  • Finance
About
 
 

Biography

Professor of Finance Avanidhar (Subra) Subrahmanyam (Ph.D. ’90) is an expert in stock market activity and behavioral finance. He is known for his pathbreaking research in the use of psychological principles to explain stock price movements and has published numerous articles in leading peer-reviewed finance and economics journals.

Appearing frequently in the media, Subrahmanyam is consulted for his expertise on the superior performance of value stocks and the phenomenon of stock market momentum to analyze spikes in gasoline prices, herd-like behavior around Apple stock, uncertainty in everyday use of the bitcoin crypto-currency and the effects of war on the stock market.

Subrahmanyam’s current research interests range from the relationship between the trading environment of a firm’s stock and the firm’s cost of capital to behavioral theories for asset price behavior and empirical determinants of the cross-section of equity returns. “We need to accept that humans are governed by a number of non-rational considerations,” he says in relation to investing behaviors. “An investor may be reluctant to admit an erroneous investment decision, which may prevent correction of over-heated stock market valuations. Academic research has indicated to investors that irrational investing can cause a significant loss of wealth.”

A founding editor of the Journal of Financial Markets, Subrahmanyam previously served as associate editor of the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Finance. He is a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Working Research Group on Market Microstructure.

His scholarly efforts have been recognized with best paper awards at the Western Finance Association meetings and the International Conference of Finance in Taiwan, and he was honored with the Smith Breeden Prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Finance (1999). His documentation of market liquidity led to a number of studies analyzing why trading costs fluctuate over time and earned him the Fama-DFA prize for the best paper on investments published in the Journal of Financial Economics (2000).

Subrahmanyam has served as a consultant to the Nasdaq Stock Market, the National Stock Exchange in Mumbai, India, San Jose Mercury News and Irwin/McGraw-Hill. He is a UCLA Anderson Inspirational 100 alumnus.

 

Education

Ph.D. Finance, 1990, UCLA Anderson School of Management

 

Publications

Capital Structure Effects on the Prices of Individual Equity Call Options (with R. Geske and Y. Zhou), Journal of Financial Economics, August 2016

The Dynamics of Market Efficiency (with D. Rösch and M. van Dijk), Review of Financial Studies, April 2017

Have Capital Market Anomalies Attenuated in the Recent Era of High Liquidity and Trading Activity? (with T. Chordia and Q. Tong), Journal of Accounting and Economics, August 2014

Financial Market Shocks and the Macroeconomy (with S. Titman), Review of Financial Studies, November 2013

 

Working Papers

Robert Geske, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam and Yi Zhou. (September 2014). "Capital Structure Effects on the Prices of Individual Equity Call Options."

Bing Han, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam and Yi Zhou. (September 2014). "Term Structure of Credit Spreads and Cross{Section of Stock Returns."

Tarun Chordia, Jianfeng Hu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, and Qing Tong. (August 2014). "Shocks to Order Flow Volatility and Stock Returns." [ Link ]

Ziyang Geng, Xindan Li, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, and Honghai Yu. (July 2014). "Do the Rich Have an Informational Advantage? Evidence Based on Account Classifications of Individual Investors." [ Link ]

Tung Lam Danga, Fariborz Moshiriana, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, and Bohui Zhang. (2014). "Global Financial Crisis, Liquidity Shocks and Global Financial Stability." [ Link ]

Martin Dierker and Avanidhar Subrahmanyam. (2014). "Dynamic Information Disclosure." [ Link ]

Andrew Grant, Petko Kalev, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam and Joakim Westerholm. (June 2014). "Stressors and Financial Market Trading: The Case of Marital Separation." [ Link ]

Xindan Li, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam and Xuewei Yang. (January 2014). "Investor Behavior and Financial Innovation: A Case Study on Callable Bull/Bear Contracts." [ Link ]

Tarun Chordia, Amit Goyal, Yoshio Nozawa, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam and Qing Tong. (January 2014). "Is the Cross-Section of Expected Bond Returns Influenced by Equity Return Predictors?" [ Link ]

Avanidhar Subrahmanyam, Michael J. Brennan, Tarun Chordia, Qing Tong. (March 2009). "Sell-side Illiquidity and the Cross-Section of Expected Stock Returns."

Jun Liu, Ehud Peleg, and Avanidhar Subrahmanyam. (February 2009). "Information, Expected Utility, and Portfolio Choice."