Tarun Ramadorai is Professor of Financial Economics at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. His areas of expertise include asset pricing, international finance, hedge funds and household finance.

Ramadorai’s recent research examines the correlation between different international asset markets and how capital flows into these markets affects pricing. Based on this work, he has contributed to the creation of forecasting models for international equity and currency returns.

He has also studied capital allocation to hedge funds and capacity constraints of hedge fund strategies. His work in this area includes developing international models of performance measurement which are widely used in both the practitioner and academic communities.

Ramadorai is currently conducting research – sponsored by the Sloan Foundation in collaboration with Harvard University – that compares and contrasts household finance institutions (such as mortgage markets, or rules and regulations surrounding equity trading) around the world. The goal of the initiative is to learn how country-level institutions drive country-specific household finance outcomes, and to eventually generate practical guidance on the adoption of international best practices to improve the functioning of consumer financial markets around the world.

Ramadorai is the Director of the Oxford-Fidelity Research Alliance which awards scholarships to students undertaking the DPhil in Financial Economics and also funds research in the area of asset pricing. The purpose of the Alliance, funded by Fidelity International, is to spur research in financial economics, with a particular emphasis on understanding the behaviour of asset prices such as stocks, bonds, commodities and foreign exchange. 

In addition to his roles within Saïd Business School, Ramadorai is a member of the Executive Committee at the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance, a Research Affiliate of the Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) in London, and an Economic Advisor to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the supra-national capital markets regulator. He is also currently a Visiting Scholar at the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India.

Ramadorai joined Saïd Business School in 2003. He has a BA in Mathematics and Economics from Williams College, an MPhil in Economics from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University. He has also spent time as a visiting academic at London Business School.

Tarun Ramadorai’s research interests encompass three key areas:

- impact of international investment flows on equities and foreign currencies in a range of countries
- performance, risk and capital formation processes of hedge funds
- household finance with a particular emphasis on emerging markets

International Finance
In the area of international finance, Ramadorai has studied factors impacting the correlation between returns in different international asset markets, with an emphasis on how international investment flows affect these correlations and asset prices. Using these insights, he has contributed to the creation of forecasting models for international equity and currency returns.

Related Publications
Tarun Ramadorai, Pab Jotikasthira and Christian Lundblad (2012) ‘Asset fire sales and purchases and the international transmission of funding shocks’, Journal of Finance. (Forthcoming)

Tarun Ramadorai, Rui Albuquerque and Sumudu Watugala (working paper 2011) ‘Trade credit and cross-country predictable firm returns’.

Tarun Ramadorai and Kenneth A. Froot (2008) ‘Institutional portfolio flows and international investments’, Review of Financial Studies, 21(2), pp. 937-972. (Formerly ‘The information content of international portfolio flows’, NBER WP 8472.)

Tarun Ramadorai (2008) ‘What determines transactions costs in foreign exchange markets?’ International Journal of Finance and Economics, 13, pp. 14-25. (Formerly ‘Persistence, performance and prices in foreign exchange markets’, CEPR WP 5861.)

Tarun Ramadorai and Kenneth A. Froot (2005) ‘Currency returns, intrinsic value and institutional investor flows’, Journal of Finance, 60(3), pp. 1535-1566. Finalist for the Smith-Breeden prize. (Formerly ‘Currency returns, institutional investor flows and exchange rate fundamentals,’ NBER WP 9101.)

Hedge Funds
Ramadorai has studied the performance, risk and capital formation of hedge funds; and he has contributed to some of the first published studies identifying the effects of capacity constraints on hedge-fund strategies. His work in this area also includes the development of new models of hedge fund performance measurement which are widely used in both the practitioner and academic communities.

Related publications

Tarun Ramadorai and Andrew Patton (forthcoming 2012) ‘On the high-frequency dynamics of hedge fund risk exposures’, Journal of Finance.

Tarun Ramadorai (forthcoming 2012) ‘Capacity constraints, investor information, and hedge fund returns’, Journal of Financial Economics.  (Previously entitled ‘Investor interest and hedge fund returns’.)

Tarun Ramadorai, Andrew Patton and Michael Streatfield (forthcoming 2012) ‘Change you can believe in? Hedge fund data revisions’.

Tarun Ramadorai and Michael Streatfield (working paper 2011) ‘Money for nothing? Understanding variation in reported hedge fund fees’.

Tarun Ramadorai, The secondary market for hedge funds and the closed hedge fund premium, 2012, Journal of Finance.

‘Institutional Investors’, in H. Kent Baker and John Nofsinger (eds.), Behavioral Finance: Investors, Corporations and Markets. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., October 2010.

Tarun Ramadorai, William Fung, David A. Hsieh and Narayan Y. Naik (2008) ‘Hedge funds: performance, risk and capital formation’, Journal of Finance, 63(4), pp. 1777-1803. Finalist for the Smith-Breeden prize.

Tarun Ramadorai, Narayan Y. Naik and Maria Stromqvist (2007) ‘Capacity constraints and hedge fund strategy returns’, European Financial Management, 13(2), pp. 239-256. INQUIRE UK best paper prize.

Household Finance
In the area of household finance, Ramadorai has been instrumental in the establishment of the Oxford-Harvard-Sloan Initiative on International
Comparative Household Finance which seeks to compare and contrast household finance institutions around the world. His work includes the analysis of mortgage finance and equity trading in emerging markets.

Related publications
Tarun Ramadorai and John Y. Campbell (working paper 2012) ‘How do regulators influence mortgage risk? Evidence from an emerging market’.

‘Institutional Investors’, in H. Kent Baker and John Nofsinger (eds.), Behavioral Finance: Investors, Corporations and Markets. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., October 2010.

Tarun Ramadorai, John Y. Campbell and Allie Schwartz, ‘Caught on tape: Institutional trading, stock returns, and earnings announcements,’ 2009, Journal of Financial Economics, 92, 66-91.

For downloadable versions of Ramadorai’s research papers and CV, please visit his personal webpage.

Tarun Ramadorai teaches Empirical Asset Pricing and International Financial Management on the MBA and the Masters in Financial Economics at Saïd Business School.

In the Empirical Asset Pricing course, Ramadorai equips students with the tools to understand asset-price movements and, particularly, to carry out empirically rigorous and theoretically focused analyses of asset pricing.

In the International Financial Management course, he draws on a variety of different teaching methods, including the use of ‘real cases’ on topics such as international taxation and the foreign direct investment location decisions that have been developed jointly with senior practitioners; guest lectures; and analysis of real international data; to provide students with real-world insight into financial management issues in a global setting. In addition to these, Ramadorai has also taught courses in Hedge Funds, Equity Investment Management, and Behavioural Finance.

Ramadorai serves as Director of the Oxford Global Investment Risk Management Programme, offered in association with the CFA Institute. This programme, which runs annually at Saïd Business School, is designed to help finance professionals build expertise in identifying the most important risks in global investment and the techniques used to effectively monitor and manage them.

In addition to his academic engagement at the School, Tarun Ramadorai is currently a Visiting Scholar with the Economic Advisory Council to the Prime Minister of India. In this role, he is reviewing issues of financial regulation and financial policy in India, and engaging with the Government on multiple levels in an advisory capacity. His leadership in the area of financial regulation also extends to Europe, where he currently serves as an Economic Adviser to the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA), the pan-European capital markets regulator.

Ramadorai has consulted to numerous hedge funds and asset management firms including Man Investments, which has jointly established the Oxford-Man Institute of Quantitative Finance with Oxford University.  Ramadorai is a member of the Executive Committee at the institute.

Ramadorai was instrumental in setting up and launching the Adam Smith conference (http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/research/finance/Pages/asapconference.aspx ) a major international conference on asset pricing and corporate finance. The first of these annual conferences was held in 2005, and the most recent conference took place at Saïd Business School in March 2012.  He frequently presents at academic and industry conferences, including the American and Western Finance Association Meetings, the Paris Hedge Fund Conference, the NIPFP-DEA Conference on International Capital Flows and the Annual Darden International Finance Conference. He also currently serves as the co-organiser of CEPR European Summer Symposium in Financial Markets’ Asset Pricing Week.

He is the recipient of numerous research grants and prizes, including recent grants from the Sloan Foundation, the International Growth Centre (IGC) and the BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre. Ramadorai has also received prizes for his academic papers from INQUIRE UK, the CFA Institute, and the European Finance Association, and has been a finalist several times for the Smith-Breeden prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Finance.

Ramadorai is a referee for leading economics and finance journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies and the Review of Financial Studies.

Media coverage
Ramadorai is a frequent media commentator and writes a regular column for The Financial Express. Recent coverage includes: