Letter from President of Southwestern Finance Association

Article Type: Letter from President of Southwestern Finance Association From: Managerial Finance, Volume 36, Issue 8.

January 19, 2010

Dear Professors Yu and Lord,

On behalf of the Southwestern Finance Association (SWFA), I congratulate the editors of Managerial Finance for bringing out this special issue of their journal based on papers presented at the 48th Annual Meeting of SWFA held in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma on 26-28 February.

The SWFA is one of the earlier regional associations in Finance dating back to 1961 (Sweetser and Petry, 1981). Our association claims a robust membership and the annual conferences are well attended. At the Oklahoma City conference, a total of 183 papers were submitted of which 145 papers were presented at the conference. One of the distinguishing features of the SWFA meeting is its focus on nurturing high-quality student papers in addition to the usual complement of quality papers by faculty members. There were 59 student papers authored by 20 students from abroad and 27 students from the US programs. At the SWFA meetings,we have special programs intended for PhD students including career development sessions, sessions with editors of reputed finance journals, and extensive opportunities to interact with other students and faculty. We want PhD students to consider SWFA as a desirable conference to attend. Our conference is truly national and international in scope.

The papers presented at Oklahoma City were generally regarded as high-quality papers. Our congratulations are due to the editors of the special issue for their exceptional efforts in selecting good papers out of the roster of many excellent papers. My special thanks go to Susana Yu who is a board member of the SWFA and one of the editors of this special issue. She was very active in taking a leadership role in this effort and read the papers, selected a set of good papers, and solicited submission from the authors. I am also thankful to Professor Richard Lord, who is the other editor of the special issue, for his efforts in making the special issue possible.

I trust that in future the SWFA will have opportunities to have Managerial Finance and other journals in our area provide additional publication opportunities to SWFA participants.

With warmest regards,

Lalatendu MisraPresident, Southwestern Finance Association, Professor and Chairman, Department of Finance, The University of Texas at San Antonio, Texas, USA

Reference

Sweetser, A.G. and Petry, G.H. (1981), “A history of the seven academic associations and their contributions to development of the discipline”, Financial Management, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 46-70.