PhD Fatemeh Hosseini, researcher in entrepreneurial finance, recruited by Tilburg University

Mar. 28, 2017

Fatemeh Hosseini, graduating PhD student and visiting scholar at Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, has been appointed assistant professor in Finance at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. She will start her new position in August.

What will you do in your new role?
“Like other academic positions, it involves teaching as well as research. I will be teaching –either an introductory finance course to undergraduate students or a course on  entrepreneurial finance to master students. As for research, I will be continuing working on the papers of my dissertation, improve them and submit them to journals for publication. I will also start new research projects, with people at Tilburg and with people in Stockholm.”

What appealed to you in this role?
“Tilburg University is one of the best places in Europe to do research in finance. The faculty in the Finance Department are strong in topics I’m interested in, such as household finance and entrepreneurial finance. Apart from that, the university organizes a couple of databases on household data and firm data. I do empirical work so for me, data is very important.”

 

What research projects are you working on right now?
“I have three finished papers in my PhD dissertation. The first I did was on the topic of labor and finance: I study how the regulations in the labor markets affect firms’ performance. And I Find that when labor laws are more strict and rigid, firm performance is worse. Firms experience lower profitability and higher fluctuations in their profitability.

The two other papers in my dissertation  are on entrepreneurial finance. In one, my co-author Egle Karmaziene and I studied how individuals’ decisions to start a business affect their savings behavior. We found that potential entrepreneurs start saving higher rates of their income two years before they start their businesses, and continue saving higher throughout the time they are running their business. The motivation is the risk involved in entrepreneurship and accumulating capital for investment in businesses.

In the other paper, I studied how entrepreneurs finance their business ideas. I especially focus on family assets and how resources in extended family affect individuals’ decisions to become entrepreneurs. I find that individuals with more wealthy relatives are more likely to start businesses. The relatives provide capital, or offer collateral to the entrepreneurs to take loans from banks.

I’m also working on a couple more projects, in entrepreneurial finance especially on  venture capitals.”

 

What’s your most important take-away from your time at the Swedish House of Finance?
“The unique thing about the Swedish House of Finance is that it puts different resources together and provides a great platform for doing research in finance. The visiting program at the Swedish House of Finance provides resources to bring people around the world here, which is great for all faculty and PhD students to get a chance to meet with them and start research collaborations. Another thing is the data center. It’s unique, complete and strong. We have, apart from the standard data that most schools have, some unique, high quality Swedish data. And we have the financial resources to buy more data if we need to. All of this makes the Swedish House of Finance a great place to do research in finance.”