Minutes of the 2015 Annual Membership Meeting

• Date: 01 August 2015
• Published date: 01 August 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/jofi.12292

THE JOURNAL OF FINANCE •VOL. LXX, NO. 4 •AUGUST 2015

AMERICAN FINANCE ASSOCIATION

Minutes of the 2015 Annual Membership Meeting

THE SEVENTY FIFTH ANNUAL Membership Meeting was held at the Boston

Westin Copley Hotel on January 4, 2015 at 5:45 pm. The video of the meeting

has been posted on the AFA website. Executive Secretary and Treasurer Jim

Schallheim called the meeting to order and welcomed those in attendance.

As previously announced, the results of the 2014 election are:

President: Patrick Bolton

President Elect: Campbell Harvey

Vice President: David Scharfstein

Directors: Ulrike Malmendier

Per Str¨

omberg

Pietro Veronesi

The Association thanks outgoing Directors Antoinette Schoar, Dimitri

Vayanos, and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen for their service.

EST Schallheim reported that the Association’s financial condition is strong

(see his report in this issue for details). Schallheim introduced a motion for a

change in the AFA Bylaws that requires a vote by the members attending this

Business Meeting. Previously,the fiscal year ran from October 1st to September

30th. The motion is to change the fiscal year to July 1 to June 30th. The

motion passed by voice vote. Schallheim also announced that the Board passed

a resolution that all authors on papers submitted to the annual meetings must

be members of the AFA.

Patrick Bolton, the 2015 Program Chair, reported on the program for the

Annual Meeting. The program consisted of 200 papers which were selected from

a record 1694 submissions (4% more than the previous year which was also a

record number of submissions). The acceptance rate was 11.8%. In addition

to 55 submitted-paper sessions, there were two non-paper sessions: an invited

panel on “Finance and Climate Risk” chaired by Kent Daniel and the AFA

Lecture on “Attitudes toward Risk-Bearing: Preferences or Perceptual Biases?”

delivered by Michael Woodford.

Vice President Campbell Harvey reported on the 2015 student travel grants.

The total number of grants was increased to 169 with different levels of award

based on the students’ distance from Boston. VP Harvey also delivered a talk

to the students about the publication and refereeing process. VP Harvey also

mentioned that individuals in the audience may not realize they are not current

AFA members and the new Board resolution was designed to help correct the

problem of declining membership.

DOI: 10.1111/jofi.12292

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