UNIVERSITY COLLEGE DUBLIN
HONORARY CONFERRING
Thursday, 7 December 2017 at 2 pm
TEXT OF THE INTRODUCTORY ADDRESS DELIVERED BY PROFESSOR JOHN COTTER, College of Business on 7 December 2017, on the occasion of the conferring of the Degree of Doctor of Laws, honoris causa on MATTHEW SPIEGEL.
President, Honoured Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen.
It is my privilege to read the citation for the awarding of an Honorary Doctorate to Professor Matthew Spiegel from Yale University.
It is a fitting tribute that UCD is awarding Matthew Spiegel the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa for all his contributions in financial economics. We are delighted that Matt is here today with family and friends to accept this Honorary Doctorate.
Matt Spiegel is enthusiastic, bright, hard-working, supportive, and entrepreneurial. These are the characteristics we want from our graduates. Matt is an inspiration to us as I am sure you will be in the future.
Matthew Spiegel is a leader in financial economics both in research and business education. He is an inspiration to us all. Professor Spiegel’s academic background is stellar. He has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University. He began his career as Assistant Professor at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia University, and was an Associate Professor at Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. Matt is now and has been a Professor of Finance at Yale School of Management since 1999.
Matthew Spiegel has a wide ranging and influential research agenda. He has worked in the areas of market microstructure, asset pricing, real estate, corporate finance, and experimental economics. He has published in leading finance, economic and real estate journals and has won many accolades including the NBAR Management Intelligence Citation of Excellence, the Michael Brennan Best Paper Award and the Ross Best Paper Award. His theoretical work has helped to explain stock market volatility, what factors lead to market breakdowns and how mergers within an industry impact the new firm’s competitors over time. His empirical work has included the development of statistical methods that can estimate the impact of local characteristics on housing returns and for identifying when and if a particular mutual fund will generate above market returns.
Professor Spiegel has and continues to give so much to his profession. He has been the executive editor of the Review of Financial Studies, the founding editor of the Journal of Financial Markets, and currently an advisory editor of Financial Management. He has served a leading financial research organisation, the Society of Financial studies with distinction, having previously been president and vice president. He was the Society's advisory chair for its annual Finance Cavalcade conference these last years, and is the advisory chair for the first Asia-Pacific Finance Cavalcade conference in 2017. The society, its flagship journals and conferences, have benefitted enormously from his leadership.
Matt does not have direct Irish connections but he has a developed a love of Ireland. In many ways his connections to Ireland and UCD are analogous to the links of many of our international graduates here today. They grew out of small but important beginnings. Matt’s wife Catherine Nolan is half Irish from her father’s side, and is an Irish citizen. On her side of the family there are strong connections with Ireland. From these important beginnings, our relationship with Matt began, and it has grown in so many ways over the years. Today, as you graduate it is worth considering the links you have built up with UCD and Ireland. Just like Matt’s relationship with us we are hoping that our links will build into the future.
We have had extensive benefits from our links with Professor Spiegel across the student and faculty bodies. Some of you have had an opportunity to sit on a module, Security Analysis and Valuation, delivered by Professor Spiegel and his colleague Shyam Sunder at Yale University. It was Matt who suggested offering this elective to UCD students through our joint membership of the Global Network for Advanced Management. I know from speaking to graduates in this and previous years how much they enjoyed taking the course. He has brought his students from Yale University to visit Ireland on a number of occasions. This flow between the Universities and between the countries has had much value for all participants.
He also has always been supportive to us in Banking and Finance at UCD, the UCD School of Business and to Irish Universities in general. For example he has provided feedback on the research of our faculty and research students, and supported research visits to Yale University. He has had formal links with us. Matt was a member of the Advisory Board of the Global Finance Academy at University College Dublin for many years. More recently he has been a very active member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Science Foundation Ireland funded Financial Mathematics and Computation research cluster.
I am privileged to present Matthew Spiegel for the award of an honorary degree.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Praehonorabilis Praeses, totaque Universitas,
Praesento vobis hunc meum filium, quem scio tam moribus quam doctrina habilem et idoneum esse qui admittatur, honoris causa, ad Gradum Doctoratus in utroque Jure, tam Civili quam Canonico; idque tibi fide mea testor ac spondeo, totique Academiae.