Juan Antolin Diaz wins AQR AMI Fellowship Award | London Business School

London Business School (LBS) Economics PhD candidate Juan Antolin Diaz has won the 2024 AQR Asset Management Institute (AMI) Fellowship Award.

The annual award recognises a LBS PhD candidate who demonstrates intellectual rigour, innovation and academic excellence. To be considered for recognition, PhD candidates must be in at least their fourth year of study at LBS, with research interests broadly in the field of asset management.

Juan was recognised for his work studying ‘How did government bonds become safe?’ and, in particular, the reasons for the persistent changes in the correlation between government bonds and stock returns.

While established explanations have focused on the role of inflation dynamics, Juan’s work focuses on the importance of global financial intermediaries in amplifying and propagating flight-to-safety dynamics in international financial markets.

His research extends the range of empirical evidence to the international dimension and contributes to methodological understandings by providing new ways to identify macroeconomic shocks from time series data. By demonstrating how the rise of levered intermediaries in the late 1990s changed the aggregate dynamics of prices, Juan’s work also deepens theoretical understandings within the field.

Fellow LBS PhD candidates Jefferson Abraham (Accounting) and Federico Bastianello (Finance) were also shortlisted for the award.