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What is Honours?

The Honours program in finance seeks to greatly extend a student’s knowledge in finance. Honours graduates have a superior knowledge of finance to that of undergraduate students. The program offers specialised studies in a student’s field of research and provides advanced knowledge broadly across finance.

The program is structured to push students to achieve high levels of academic study. As such the program is very demanding on students and requires extraordinary mettle and persistence. The program consists of five core components. Further subjects maybe required depending on a students background and research interests.

Core Subjects
Advanced Topics in Finance
Quantitative Methods
Research Methodology
Selected Readings
Thesis

These five subjects provide students with an excellent foundation for further research in academic and professional environments. The advanced topics in finance course covers advanced theories in corporate finance, banking and asset pricing. Each week a member of the academic staff will present a specific topic related to their own research efforts. As such students are ensured of up-to-date knowledge and unique insights of a particular area.

The quantitative methods and research methodology courses provide the framework for conducting research and the preparation of the student’s thesis which is written in the latter half of the year. These courses will provide knowledge of how to correctly conduct a research project. The skills learnt are of vital importance for further academic studies and also provide an excellent frame of reference for problem solving in a professional environment.

The selected readings course is conducted with the student’s academic supervisor. With the academic staff member’s tutorage the student will gain highly specialised knowledge in their chosen area of research. The skills learnt in this subject enable students to critically assess academic literature and form an understanding of the progression of literature to date.

The focus of the Honours program is in the formation of the thesis. The thesis is an extensive piece of work that seeks to find evidence or repute an idea in finance. Some example of previous theses titles are:

“Herding within socially responsible investments”
“A Study Into The Retail Fuel Market of Adelaide”
“Electricity, Weather and Optimal Hedging: The Case of Australia”
“Investor Sentiment in the Australian Market: The Implication of Closed-End Fund Discounts as an Indicator of Sentiment”
“Management and Manipulation? An Investigation into the credibility of Singapore’s exchange rate target band.”

The formation of the thesis will outline the body of knowledge in the field of research, the research methodology, data description and analysis, the results and any conclusions from the research conducted.

The areas of staff expertise available in supporting a thesis are: