Goodbye and good luck

aug. 11, 2017

PhD-student Valeri Sokolovski recently accepted an offer to start as Assistant Professor at HEC Montreal, Canada. Until his Canadian work permit is approved he is busy seeing his current projects in the field of international finance through to publication – and saying goodbye to colleagues at the Swedish House of Finance.

– I will most fondly remember the atmosphere of collegiality. There are many very talented people here and I’ve found that each one, almost without exception, is always ready to help. I definitely took advantage of that during my time here. The support I received was tremendous and I will sorely miss that aspect. Additionally, there is a steady stream of international guests and speakers invited, facilitating ample opportunity to meet, discuss and get advice from those who are at the top of the profession. With regard to Sweden, I will miss the sacredness with which they approach lunch times and coffee breaks.

For Valeri, finishing his PhD degree felt like an achievement and a starting point for a career in academia.

– My plan right now is to carry on learning from both my new colleagues at HEC and my mentors here at the Swedish House of Finance. There are many smart people working in the field right now, so I think compared to even a decade ago, there is very little low hanging fruit left to pick. To make an original contribution, one needs to put in a lot of hard work. However, on the plus side, these days financial economists can take advantage of a lot of rich datasets as well as cheap computing power which may not have been available to the previous generation of researchers.