ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

2000 JOURNAL OF FINANCIAL INTERMEDIATION SYMPOSIUM:

NEW TECHNOLOGIES, FINANCIAL INNOVATION, AND INTERMEDIATION

Boston College, Boston, Massachusetts, May 25-27, 2000

Recent changes in information technology have dramatically accelerated the pace of change in financial markets and institutions. The use of the internet for various financial transactions has increased the speed with which information can be disseminated widely, while significantly reducing the cost involved. This, in turn, has accelerated the pace of financial innovation, thus leading to dramatic changes in corporate financing practices and in the very nature of financial intermediation. One important effect of these advances in information technology has been to lay siege to the network of relationships which has traditionally served as the core of the production technology of a financial intermediary. The recent applications of internet technology to the pricing and distribution of securities (as pioneered by Wit capital and Hambrecht & Co in the context of IPOs) is only the latest example of how technology has begun to transform this network of relationships.

These developments raise several interesting issues regarding the impact of these advances in information technology and finance on:

• The pricing, distribution, and design of IPOs as well as seasoned security issues; the timing of the going-public decisions by firms; the design of rules for secondary market trading in IPOs
• The availability, costs, and benefits of venture capital financing; design of venture-capital contracts; the development of new institutions and strategies to finance high-risk and knowledge-based ventures
• The pace of financial innovation; the development of innovative financial products and strategies; the design of corporate securities
• The design of financial intermediaries; competition and co-operation between intermediaries; the rise of new kinds of financial intermediaries
• The design and ownership structure of stock exchanges and other financial markets; design of trading rules in financial markets; competition and co-operation between stock exchanges; the regulation of financial markets, intermediaries, and firms

The 2000 JFI Symposium will focus on these and other related issues. We are actively soliciting both theoretical and empirical papers that address these issues. The conference will be held at the Carroll School of Management, Boston College, in Boston, Massachusetts, and will be sponsored by the Financial Services Center at Boston College. There is no charge for submitting papers to the Symposium. The Symposium will be organized by Professors Thomas Chemmanur and William Wilhelm. Papers submitted to the Symposium may also be submitted to the JFI for consideration for publication. If you wish to have your paper considered for publication in the JFI, please indicate this and enclose a check for the reduced submission fee of $70 made out to The Journal of Financial Intermediation. The accepted papers will either appear in a dedicated issue of the JFI or be delineated in a regular issue, and will be subject to the usual standards of the JFI. Conference organizers will provide accommodation and travel expenses (subject to pre-specified limits) to authors whose papers are selected for the program.

Five copies of the paper should be sent to:

by November 20, 1999

For more information contact:

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