Standard & Poor's will award $75,000 in cash prizes to recognize excellence in research in innovative applications of financial market indexes in investment management.
The SPIVA Awards, for S&P Index vs. Active Methodology, will include a $50,000 first prize and $25,000 second prize to individuals, according to an S&P statement Thursday. Research on any indexes currently published by S&P or its competitors is eligible.
S&P plans to make the awards annual, starting with the initial awards planned for about March 15, although it hasn't set a specific date.
Submissions are due Dec. 15 and must be made through www.spindices.com/spiva.
The criteria, also available at the website, include papers completed in the 24 months prior to the submission deadline that have not been published in a referred journal.
A panel that includes S&P officials and academics will select winners. Its members are David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the S&P Index Committee; Srikant Dash, managing director of S&P Indices; Antti Petajisto, visiting assistant professor of finance at the Stern School of Business, New York University; Vijay Singal, J. Gray Ferguson chair professor of finance at the Pamplin College of Business, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University; Robert E. Whaley, professor of management and co-director of the Financial Markets Research Center at Vanderbilt University; and Harold Evensky, president of Evensky & Katz, a wealth management firm.
