AQR Launches $100,000 Annual Competition for Applied Finance Papers

GREENWICH Conn., Oct. 3, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- AQR Capital Management, a $40-billion asset management firm with a particular focus on alternatives, today announced a new award for applied academic papers in finance: The AQR Insight Award. This $100,000 annual competition seeks to identify the current academic finance papers that have the most significant practical implication for investors.

"Given the huge burden of future financial obligations," stated David G. Kabiller, founding partner of AQR and Head of Client Strategies, "it's important to have leading thinkers in analytical finance and economics focus their intelligence on methods to enhance investment performance. The AQR Insight Award has been launched in recognition of the need to promote academic research that illuminates the drivers of successful investing and that can be applied to real-world portfolios."

The competition seeks unpublished papers that study investment in liquid assets for both tax-exempt institutional and taxable investor portfolios. Areas of focus include asset allocation, security selection, portfolio implementation, and risk management. The papers will be assessed according to the novelty and acuity of their insights, and the potential value of those insights deployed within an investor's portfolio. The former will be weighed by the academic members of the panel, the latter by the investment managers.

"AQR is eager to engage these researchers, continued Mr. Kabiller. "Based on our experience in helping ideas germinate into actual strategies, we do expect the process to stimulate our own innovation – but our goal here is to recognize the acorns of good research."

The award may be divided among one to three competing entries depending on the quality of the submissions each year. Initial entries are due in January 2012 with up to five finalists invited to present their papers in Greenwich, CT to the panel of judges. This panel consists of senior members of AQR's portfolio management team, most of whom have Ph.D.s in analytic finance, and many of whom are leading academic finance experts from universities such as Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Northwestern, NYU and the University of Chicago.

The AQR Insight Award Committee consists of Gregor Andrade, Ph.D., Cliff Asness, Ph.D., Andrea Frazzini, Ph.D., Marco Hanig, Ph.D., Ronen Israel, David Kabiller, CFA, John Liew, Ph.D., Michael Mendelson, Mark Mitchell, Ph.D., Tobias Moskowitz, Ph.D., Lasse Pedersen, Ph.D., Todd Pulvino, Ph.D. and Andrew Sterge, Ph.D.

About AQR Capital

AQR Capital Management, LLC is an investment management firm located in Greenwich, CT, founded in 1998. The firm's founding principals, Clifford S. Asness, Ph.D., David G. Kabiller, CFA, Robert J. Krail, and John M. Liew, Ph.D., were formerly at Goldman Sachs, & Co., where Asness, Krail, and Liew comprised the senior management of the Quantitative Research Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

AQR manages $40 billion in assets (approximate as of 6/30/2011, including assets managed by CNH Partners, an affiliate of AQR), primarily for institutional investors such as pensions and endowments. The firm offers a broad range of investment strategies from aggressive high-volatility market-neutral hedge funds to low-volatility benchmark driven traditional portfolios. AQR also provides access to these alternative and innovative strategies through mutual funds.

Questions about submitting?
Email: [email protected]
Or: www.aqr.com/insightaward (as of noon Oct 3, 2011, NYT time)

SOURCE AQR Capital Management, LLC