Our Mission
The Program for Financial Studies (PFS) at Columbia Business School seeks to support and promote the School’s research in financial economics and quantitative finance, to advance the School’s educational mission, and to foster engagement with industry partners.
The dropping cost of computational resources, the extraordinary growth in traditional and nontraditional data sets, and constant technological progress have combined to fundamentally transform research in the social sciences, and in financial economics in particular.
In recognition of this, the PFS seeks to create a world-leading research center in quantitative finance and financial analytics at Columbia Business School. As part of its educational missions, the PFS administers Columbia Business School’s Master of Science in Financial Economics (MSFE) program. The MSFE educates the next generation of industry leaders, ready to apply their quantitative training to solve real-world problems in the finance industry. Together the research and educational missions of the PFS allow us to foster important interactions with industry partners, involving both the sharing of research and ideas and student recruitment.
Because finance research is interdisciplinary in nature, our affiliated faculty come from multiple departments at Columbia Business School, including Finance, Decision, Risk, and Operations, Accounting and Economics.
We run events focused on research, industry thought-leadership and student programming. Many events are open to practitioners and alumni, as well as the faculty and student academic community. For a full list of events, please see our Events page.
We thank our industry affiliate, the Society of Quantitative Analysts (SQA), for their collaboration and membership for our MSFE students.
