Summer PhD Workshop on Entrepreneurial Finance

Summer PhD Workshop on Entrepreneurial Finance

Dates: Monday, June 8th to Friday, June 12th, 2026. Applications are due February 15th, 2026.

Location: Nova School of Business and Economics, Lisbon, Portugal, hosted by Nova SBE Haddad Entrepreneurship Institute. The workshop is co-organized by the RCEA Financial Economics Network.

Co-organizers: Michael Ewens (Columbia Business School and NBER) and Gilles Chemla (Imperial College, CNRS, and CEPR). Local organizer: Miguel Ferreira (Nova)

Description

This week-long workshop roughly follows the structure of the Entrepreneurial Finance Ph.D. course described on this site with several modifications. The inaugural workshop was held in August 2024 at Imperial College (past program here) and the second was held in 2025 (past program here). We will cover the major topics from the 6-week in-person course and highlight key institutional details required for successful entrepreneurial finance research. Several sessions will focus on the “how” of research, key databases used in the field, opportunities to present new ideas, and live examples of some data analysis in recent work. Students will have ample opportunities to interact with their peers and the participating faculty. Importantly, this workshop is not a substitute for the invaluable NBER Entrepreneurship Bootcamp, which provides a rigorous education in the broad entrepreneurship area in a fantastic environment (the NBER Summer Institute). This workshop provides in-depth coverage of entrepreneurial finance topics in some bootcamp sessions.

Lectures will be lead by Michael Ewens (Columbia), Gilles Chemla (Imperial College, CNRS, and CEPR), Rui Silva (Nova) and Francisco Queiro (Nova).

Goals and teaching objectives

Few universities have courses dedicated to entrepreneurial finance, while the opportunities for research and job opportunities are growing. Motivated by this, the workshop aims to provide an overview of modern research in entrepreneurial finance and provide the foundation for success in producing research: mastering institutional details. These include definitions, industry norms, regulations (history of changes), laws, databases, disclosure rules, and more. There is a hidden “literature” of these institutional details in all major empirical work. This course presents a literature review for these details while teaching entrepreneurial finance.

Target students

Students past their second year of the Ph.D. program in economics, finance, strategy, management, or related fields are welcome to apply. Applicants from outside top schools with faculty active in the entrepreneurial finance area and those outside the U.S. will be given preference.

For more information and to apply, please go to:

https://entrepreneurial.finance/summer-phd-workshop-on-entrepreneurial-finance/

We very much look forward to seeing you at Nova.