Elena Carletti Appointed EFA Vice President

Elena Carletti, Full Professor of Finance at Bocconi, has been appointed Vice-President of the European Finance Association (EFA) with the prospect to become President in 2022. As Vice-President, she will also be Program Chair of the next EFA annual conference (EFA 2021), to be held at Bocconi in August 2021. The two offices are, in fact, intertwined and subject to double screening: EFA Executive Committee accepts, first, the candidacy of a University as conference location, and checks, then, the academic standing of the proposed Program Chair, soon to become President of the Association.

"My activity, like the scholarly production in many fields, will be conditioned by the COVID pandemic," Professor Carletti says, "as I expect its consequences to be the focus of EFA 2021, and especially of the sessions organized in cooperation with financial institutions".

The coronavirus will deeply affect the organization of the conference and the financial model of many scholarly associations, which currently depend on membership and conference fees. "EFA 2020 has been an online conference with no participation fees," Prof. Carletti says. "This also disadvantages young scholars, preventing them from meeting more senior ones. We have to find a presumably hybrid model, capable of attracting both young and senior scholars, but it all depends on the evolution of the pandemic."

In a male-dominated field such as Finance, Prof. Carletti is happy about her appointment also from a gender viewpoint. In 45 years, only a handful of EFA Presidents have been women and both scholars and practitioners are still disproportionately male. "I hope this appointment can contribute to young female scholars' self-confidence," she concludes.