Alexandru Barbu wins BlackRock Applied Research Award

Alexandru Barbu is the winner of this year’s BlackRock Applied Research Award. A London Business School Ph.D. candidate in Finance, Alexandru’s winning paper, Ex-Post Loss Sharing in Consumer Financial Markets, beat stiff competition from four very promising researchers drawn from doctoral programmes at Harvard, Princeton, Wharton, and Stanford.

Alexandru’s research focuses on financial intermediation, insurance, and household finance, demonstrating how gaps in consumer protection regulation have allowed insurers to recover losses in guaranteed return products after the financial crisis. The AQR Asset Management Institute at London Business School supported this research by providing a data purchase grant.

Now in its sixth year, the BlackRock Applied Research Award recognises the top five job market papers submitted by Ph.D. candidates, awarding USD $20,000 to the winning paper and $2,500 to the runners-up. Entrants to the award are expected to draw on quantitative research and provide practical solutions to the challenges faced by professionals in the wider investment community.

Commenting on Alexandru’s research and his award from BlackRock, one of the academic directors of the School’s AQR Asset Management Institute, LBS Professor of Finance, Anna Pavlova, said that Alexandru’s award helped promote excellence in research related to asset management.