Francesco Franzoni
SFI Senior Chair, Professor of Finance, Università della Svizzera italiana
Francesco Franzoni is Professor of Finance at the Università della Svizzera italiana and a research fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research. Professor Franzoni's research has been published in the top finance journals and featured in the international press.
Expertise
Professor Franzoni deepens the study of the pros and cons of active versus passive asset management. He has recently been focusing on competition within the ETF marketplace. His findings reveal that ETF providers have followed a twofold competitive strategy, on the one hand reducing prices of broad-based products and, on the other, generating monopoly rents from boutique products. Data further shows that specialized and thematic ETFs exhibit disappointing performance five years after launch as they contain fashionable stocks that are likely overvalued at launch. Overall, investors need to be aware that investing in specialized and thematic ETFs instead of broad-based benchmarks comes with several downsides, such as lower diversification benefits, paying higher fees, and investing in overvalued assets. Professor Franzoni actively participates in SFI Knowledge Exchange activities on fund selection and investing in an inflationary environment.
Expertise Fields
- Financial Markets
- Financial Crises
- Information and Market Efficiency
- Portfolio Management and Asset Classes
- Asset Pricing
- Equities
- Portfolio Management
- Financial Institutions
- Independent Asset Managers
- Institutional Investors and Funds
- Pension Funds
- Venture Capital and Private Equity