Sri City: Research symposium held on emerging trends in finance

Sri City: IFMR Graduate School of Business (GSB) at Krea University organized a two-day Research Symposium on Finance and Economics at the university campus. The Symposium focused on various topical subjects within the world of Finance and Economics like Financial Globalization and Economic Development, emerging trends in Corporate Finance and Governance, Behavioural Finance, Digital Finance, Financial Inclusion, Asset Pricing and Financial Markets. The Symposium was a successful event that saw over 50 participants and 20 paper presentations.

Dr. V Anantha Nageswaran, Dean-IFMR Graduate School of Business in his welcome address highlighted, "The Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR) has a rich tradition of academic and research excellence. Research pursued at IFMR has a practical orientation and policy relevance. This Research Symposium is a platform for exchange of ideas, questions and answers between academics, students and industry practitioners from many corners of the world, making it intellectually stimulating and enriching experience. The high quality of sessions and paper presentations is a testimony to the high esteem in which they hold Krea University and IFMR GSB."

Vice Chancellor of Krea University, Dr Sunder Ramaswamy shared in his opening message that IFMR GSB had begun a new journey under the aegis of Krea University, pioneering interwoven learning to prepare students for a dynamically diverse world. He further reiterated that for the historically research focussed IFMR GSB, the Research Symposium is an important initiative. The participation of researchers from India and abroad, as well as the careful selection of papers by the Scientific Committee, evidences tremendous support this initiative has received.

Dr Parab Bardhan, Professor of Graduate School at the Department of Economics at UC Berkeley delivered the inaugural address. In his talk, Dr Bardhan spoke on the impact of inequality and inefficiency on the economy. Citing recent research, he said "a long-term rise in inequality can push the economy into a deep recession. It may hurt macroeconomic performance by making it difficult to stimulate enough mass consumer spending".

The two-day Symposium included a pre-symposium workshop on empirical corporate finance, plenary sessions, technical sessions and a panel discussion. Some of the speakers included Dr. Nagpurnanand Prabhala from the John Hopkins Cary Business School, Dr. Paresh Narayan from Deakin University, Australia and Dr. Bala Balachandran from La Trobe University, Australia. A unique feature of the Symposium was a panel discussion on "Blockchain, Big Data and Business: The Way Forward" where distinguished experts from the industry like R Vivekanand (VP & Co-Head, TCS Financial Solutions), Rangaraj Sriramulu (SVP, Digital Transformation Alorica), Rajaram Venkataraman (Founder, Navya Insights) and Dr. Madhan Kumar Srinivasan (Analytics Innovation Principal and Lead, Cloud Innovation Centre, Accenture) participated and deliberated upon the critical issues pertaining to the topic.