2026 UC Davis-FMA Napa Finance Conference 

20 & 21 March 2026 | Napa Valley, CA

Co-hosted by the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and FMA’s flagship journal, Financial Management, the 22nd Annual 2026 UC Davis-FMA Napa Finance Conference will feature high-quality papers from scholars conducting financial research.

The 2026 Conference will be held on Saturday, 21 March 2026 at Beringer Vineyards; conference dinners will be held on Friday, 20 March and  Saturday, 21 March.

Program Co-Chairs

• Joseph Chen, Associate Professor of Finance and Associate Dean of Programs and Curriculum, UC Davis
• Kathleen Kahle, Ann Griffin Endowed Chair in Finance, University of Arizona and Editor, Financial Management
• Ayako Yasuda, Maurice J. and Marcia G. Gallagher Chair in Finance, UC Davis

Conference Program

Friday, 20 March 2026

Conference Dinner, Bottega, 6:30 pm reception, 7:00 pm dinner 

Saturday, 21 March 2026

Breakfast on your own (Southbridge and Wydown both offer complimentary continental breakfast)

8:10 am, Carpool to Beringer Vineyards

8:30 am, Welcome (Hudson House)

Presentations

8:45 am - 9:30 am

Sparse Portfolios and Benchmarking in Corporate Bond Markets
Zheng Li, London Business School | Anna Pavlova, London Business School | Taisiya Sikorskaya, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

9:30 am - 10:15 am

The Costs of Bankruptcy Misperceptions
Samuel Antill, Harvard Business School || Eleanor Jenke, Harvard Business School || Raymond Kluender, Harvard Business School

10:15 am - 10:45 am
Break

10:45 am - 11:30 am

Credit Without Proximity: Informational Frictions and Unequal Gains from Technology
Quinn Maingi, USC Marshall School of Business || Erica Xuewei Jiang, UCLA Anderson School of Management || Yeonjoon Lee, Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond

11:30 am - 12:15 pm

What Treasury Auctions Reveal About Investor Demand
Fabricius Somogyi, Northeastern University || Jonathan Wallen, Harvard Business School || Lingdi Xu, Harvard University

12:15 pm - 2:00 pm
Luncheon

2:00 pm - 2:45 pm

Small-Scale Mentoring, Large-Scale Innovation: Evidence from a Superstar Firm
Colleen Chien, University of California Berkeley || Jillian Grennan, Emory University || Jason Sandvik, University of Arizona

2:45 pm - 3:30 pm

Patent Obfuscation and Reliance on External Financing
Donald Bowen III, Lehigh University || Kathleen Hanley, Lehigh University || Sungjoung Kwon, Wayne State University || William Mann, Emory University || Qianqian Yu, Lehigh University

4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Private Tour and Tasting

6:00 pm
Conference Dinner, Charlie's Napa Valley

Presenting authors appear in bold.

Paper Submissions

The deadline to submit a paper was Wednesday, 19 November 2025. We are no longer accepting submissions.

Click here to read the Call For Papers

The editors of Financial Management (FM), the flagship journal of FMA International, will be apprised by the conference program committee of papers that the committee assesses to be of particularly high-quality.  In select cases, the editors will “lightly solicit” papers for submission to FM by offering fast-turnaround, high-quality reviews, waived initial submission fees, and enhanced marketing of papers that are eventually accepted through this submission route. Referees for “lightly-solicited” papers will be made aware that the paper was invited for submission by the editors.  While these invitations do not promise eventual publication of papers in FM, the invitations are only offered to a small number of papers each year that the respective FMA conference program committees identify as likeliest to clear the bar for publication in FM without major revisions. 

Conference Sponsors

About UC Davis 

The UC Davis Graduate School of Management is focused on preparing the next generation of inspired, results-driven and innovative leaders who are committed to making a positive impact. Its vision as a business school on the rise is to spur new business and job creation, prepare innovative management leaders, and accelerate investment and innovation through strong partnerships with industry.

Every day, the community of faculty, students, alumni and staff is making an impact at Fortune 500 firms, mid-sized companies and promising startups by helping to put new ideas into action.