Wenxin Du, associate professor of finance and a Fama Faculty Fellow, has been awarded a Sloan Research Fellowship for 2021.
The fellowships, which are sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, are awarded annually to 128 nontenured scientists and scholars in the United States and Canada who demonstrate what the foundation describes as “outstanding promise.”
The fellowships include a $75,000 grant that is distributed over two years.
Wenxin Du, who is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and a research affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, said she will use the grant to expand her research efforts on global dollar funding markets.
“My current research agenda started in a rather esoteric corner of the foreign exchange markets called covered interest rate parity deviation,” she said. “I am quite proud that I have transformed this esoteric corner into a closely watched barometer for global capital markets.”
The Sloan Research Fellowship, she added, “gives further credibility that this line of research is not a niche topic but is, in fact, an area of broad interest and relevance.”
In order to qualify for a fellowship, candidates must first be nominated by a department head or senior researcher.
“Professor Du is an exceptionally talented and influential researcher. For the questions Wenxin explores, it is essential to get the details of the institutional setting right. She has a unique talent for combining exceptional empirical skills with detailed institutional knowledge.”
Ralph Koijen, the AQR Capital Management Distinguished Service Professor of Finance and a Fama Faculty Fellow, nominated Professor Du.
“Professor Du is an exceptionally talented and influential researcher,” he said. “For the questions Wenxin explores, it is essential to get the details of the institutional setting right. She has a unique talent for combining exceptional empirical skills with detailed institutional knowledge.”
He added that Professor Du’s most influential work “focuses on the interactions between financial institutions and asset markets and the ongoing challenges faced by monetary policymakers and financial regulators around the world.”
The candidates for Sloan Research Fellowships are judged by various selection committees. This year’s Economics Committee consisted of Andrew Atkeson of the University of California at Los Angeles, Judith Chevalier of Yale University, and Matthew Gentzkow of Stanford University.
The fellowship is the latest of several awards Professor Du has received over the past few years. The others include the Amundi Pioneer First Prize and the AQR Insight Award. Her work has also been featured on Bloomberg and in the Economist, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
Professor Du joined Booth in 2019 after a five-year stint as principal economist for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.
“After five years at the Fed, I was ready to give academia a try,” she said. “Booth offered the best possible opportunity for me to make the transition. What I like most are the people. We have extremely talented faculty, excellent support, and great students. The research machinery is very efficiently run here. It is indeed a great place to work.”
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