Annual global conference on finance adapts to virtual environment

The 29th Annual Conference on Pacific Basin Finance, Economics, Accounting, and Management (PBFEAM) was held at Rutgers Business School, September 3 and 4, 2021. The theme of the conference was “Risk Management, Financial Technology, and Derivatives.”

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 22-panel conference (including simultaneous breakouts) this year was held online.

The main objective of PBFEAM 2021 was to provide a comprehensive global forum for experts and participants from academia and industries to exchange ideas and present the results of ongoing research. Over two days, participants engaged with the most state-of-the-art areas of data analysis, financial technology, economics, statistics, and financial accounting, and management.

One hundred thirty participants from around the world logged in to present research, respond to paper presentations, network, and exchange ideas. Assistant Professor Tobey Karen Scharding, Department of Management & Global Business, Rutgers Business School, has presented at numerous online conferences.  She chaired Session 4: Management and Finance, and she gave her paper “Trust, Trustworthiness, and Trust-Free Technologies.”

Scharding said, “I had a great experience presenting my paper.  The PBFEAM conference was impressive for how seamless the technology was and engaged were the audience members.”  The discussant for her paper, Professor Jack Clark Francis, Baruch College, The City University of New York, guided the conversation so that Scharding could get useful feedback even given the remote setting.

Distinguished leaders from the academe and corporations provided engaging and thought-provoking keynote addresses.  Attendees heard from Professor Guofu Zhou, Olin Business School, whose research interests are primarily in Investment management and big data; R. Harold “Hal” Schroeder, CPA, most recently a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board; Dr. Thomas S. Y. Ho, president of Thomas Ho Company Limited, a leading financial engineering firm; and Professor Richard E. Kihlstrom, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, who was elected a fellow of the Econometric Society in 1981.

On the second day, participants heard from; Professor Wolfgang Karl Härdle, Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany; Professor Terry Marsh, CEO of Quantal International, INC. and Emeritus Professor of Finance at U.C. Berkeley; and accounting professor Bharat Sarath, Rutgers Business School.

The Program Co-Directors were Distinguished Professor of Finance and Economics Cheng-Few Lee and Professor Bharat Sarath, both of Rutgers Business School. Lee started the conference at RBS in 1992.

Since then, the conference has been held in Hong Kong (1994, 1998), Taiwan (1995, 1999. 2003, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2019, 2020), Bangkok (2000, 2004, 2009), Rutgers (1996, 2001, 2005, 2012, 2018), Singapore (1997, 2002, 2017), Vietnam (2007, 2015), Australia (2008, 2013), China (2010), and Japan (2014).

The 30th Annual Conference on  PBFEAM will be held at National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan, on May 13-15, 2022.