The First Meeting on Methodological and Empirical Advances in Financial Analysis, 14-15 Feb 2008, was a great success !
The attendance has exceeded MEAFA's expectations and we were happy to see everyone leaving with a smile and a promise to come back again next year.
The meeting enjoyed the presence of 43 registered attendees and speakers, half of whom came from institutions outside The University of Sydney. In specific, we had 12 attendees from other intra-state universities (4 University of New South Wales, 4 University Technology Sydney, 1 Macquarie, 2 University of Western Sydney, 1 University of Wollongong), 2 from other state universities (1 Australian National University, 1 University of Melbourne), and 5 international (1 Massey University, 1 University of Wales Bangor, 1 PUCI Rio Brazil, 2 Cambridge).
MEAFA acknowledges that the successfulness of the event was, to a great part, due to the active participation of all attendees whom we wholeheartedly thank for their support. Special thanks extend to the two international speakers, Prof Michael Bradbury and Prof Stuart McLeay. It is very important for MEAFA to maintain an international profile by linking with other international networks and scholars who appreciate the benefits from cross-disciplinary work such as this one.
The meeting's atmosphere was kept informal and that proved to be a key element in motivating friendly and constructive discussion. The presented papers benefited from extensive feedback from an audience that covered a number of disciplines, including accounting, econometrics, economics, finance and statistics.
The workshop was most impressive in bringing out the depth of research in financial analysis and the relevance of working across disciplines towards common research topics. This aim was certainly achieved given the great range of topics, data sources and statistical techniques that were covered.
MEAFA intents to make this an annual meeting. Next year the meeting will take place in late January and we will again enjoy the participation of international speakers.
In the meantime, note that MEAFA is organising another annual event. This will be a 3-day research training workshop on Stata, Data Management, Time Series Analysis and Panel Data Analysis. For more details please visit MEAFA's activities page.
Again, the most sincere thanks to all participants and presenters who have helped MEAFA take its first step.