Market Manipulation and Microstructure

Pamela C. Moulton

Associate Professor,
Nolan School of Hotel Administration,
SC Johnson College of Business,
Cornell University

Pamela Moulton is an expert in financial markets and market microstructure. Professor Moulton focuses on how market participants, including institutional investors, proprietary traders, and market makers, affect price discovery and liquidity. She researches the impact of high-frequency trading on information revelation in markets; how designated and voluntary market makers affect stock liquidity; and fraud detection in financial statements. Professor Moulton has more than thirty years of experience as an academic and in senior positions at global investment banks and the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). She has been retained as an expert witness and testified in depositions.

Prior to her academic career, Professor Moulton served as a managing director and senior economist at the NYSE, where she conducted equity market microstructure research. Previously, she worked for more than a dozen years at various Wall Street firms, leading teams in fixed-income research, relative value research, financial futures and options strategies, and municipal trading strategies.

Professor Moulton publishes articles in leading finance and accounting journals, including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. She serves as an associate editor of the Financial Review and the Journal of Financial Markets. Previously, she was an associate editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance.

Professor Moulton is a research affiliate of the Cornell FinTech Initiative and the Cornell Institute for Behavioral and Household Finance. She is also a member of the Economic Advisory Board of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).

At Cornell’s SC Johnson College of Business, Professor Moulton teaches courses in finance, fixed income analysis, and valuation to undergraduate and graduate students. She has been honored with numerous awards for teaching excellence. Before joining the Cornell faculty, she taught M.B.A. courses in finance, fixed income, and financial markets at the Fordham University Graduate School of Business Administration.

Erik R. Sirri

Professor of Finance (Emeritus),
Babson College;
Former Director, SEC Division of Trading and Markets;
Senior Advisor, Cornerstone Research

Erik Sirri consults with clients on matters related to asset management, including robo-advising, mutual funds, and exchange-traded products; securities trading, including high-frequency trading; and financial institutions, with a special emphasis on broker-dealer issues. Professor Sirri has extensive experience with regulatory enforcement matters.

Professor Sirri’s research focuses on the interaction of securities law and finance, investment management, securities market structure, and capital markets. From 2006 through 2009, Professor Sirri was director of the Division of Trading and Markets at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), where he was responsible for matters related to the regulation of stock and options exchanges, national securities associations, brokers, dealers, clearing agencies, and credit ratings agencies. He served as chief economist of the SEC from 1996 through 1999, and was an assistant professor of finance at Harvard Business School from 1989 to 1995.

Professor Sirri’s writings have been published in the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Markets, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and other journals and books. He has served on the boards of securities exchanges, mutual funds, industry associations, and foundations. Professor Sirri has consulted for securities firms, stock exchanges, mutual fund companies, issuers, and information vendors on a variety of regulatory and business matters.

Andrea L. Eisfeldt

Laurence D. and Lori W. Fink Endowed Chair in Finance,
Professor of Finance,
UCLA Anderson School of Management,
University of California, Los Angeles

Andrea Eisfeldt is an expert on financial markets. Professor Eisfeldt’s current research includes financial economic issues related to market liquidity, traditional and intangible asset valuation, the impact of generative artificial intelligence (AI) on firm values, bank products and valuation, over-the-counter (OTC) markets, and equity-based compensation.

Professor Eisfeldt has been retained as an expert witness in numerous finance matters, analyzing a range of issues that include valuation, financial institutions, investment, and fixed income and derivatives, as well as FinTech and crypto assets. In securities class actions, she has addressed class certification, loss causation, and damages issues. Professor Eisfeldt has testified in depositions, arbitrations, and trials.

Professor Eisfeldt holds editorial roles at leading academic journals and has published articles in the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Monetary Economics, Real Estate Economics, and Econometrica, among other highly regarded research outlets. Her work has been awarded best paper prizes by the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and Real Estate Economics.

At the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Professor Eisfeldt is a research associate in the programs for asset pricing, corporate finance, and economic fluctuations and growth.

Professor Eisfeldt is a member of the board of directors of the UCLA Investment Company, which manages part of the University’s endowment. She has also served on the board of the American Finance Association as a member of the investments, ethics, and strategic planning committees. She also serves as an academic advisor to Vise, a FinTech investment management firm. Professor Eisfeldt’s research on valuing intangible assets led to the creation of the Next Intangible Indices used in the Simplify NXTI ETF.

In addition to her more than two decades in finance research and teaching, Professor Eisfeldt has extensive asset management experience, including as chief economist at Structured Portfolio Management and as a consultant to AQR Capital Management.

At UCLA Anderson, Professor Eisfeldt teaches courses on bonds, options and currencies, corporate finance, FinTech, and cryptocurrency. Previously, she spent a decade at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, receiving tenure in 2007.