PhD Candidates in Finance at Tilburg University CentER Graduate School of Business

As a PhD candidate in Finance, you will be trained to acquire state-of-the-art knowledge and skills that are indispensable to conduct academic research. As you approach the completion of your training, you will become responsible for teaching assistant duties. Throughout your employment as a PhD candidate, you will collaborate with the Faculty at the Finance department and with other PhD students.

You will be enrolled as a PhD candidate in the world-class PhD program of CentER Graduate School of Business.
The PhD program consists of two phases. In the first phase, lasting 1.5 years, the focus is on training you to become a successful researcher in Finance. You will receive extensive graduate-level training by taking several PhD-level courses.  .
Modeled around an international standard of high quality in PhD education, the PhD training phase is meant to provide PhD candidates with a broad array of theoretical and econometric tools that are necessary to successfully develop original scholarly research at the frontiers of financial economics. All courses are taught in English. he coursework in this first phase covers microeconomics, macroeconomics, and econometrics as well as field courses in corporate finance, asset pricing and investments, banking, behavioral finance, and advanced topics in finance. CentER’s graduate school offers a broad choice of advanced courses in economics, including behavioral and experimental, financial econometrics, accounting, and strategy. In the second phase of the PhD, lasting about 2.5 years, you will conduct dissertation research.  A PhD dissertation at CentER requires developing 3 papers. The aim is to write dissertation chapters that are worthy of publication tin high-quality academic journals. Two advisors from the Finance Research group will be assigned to you and will provide advice and supervision of your PhD research.

More broadly,  you will collaborate extensively with the members of the Finance department research group, a high-quality and high-impact research group with more than 20 active researchers. You will be able to benefit from the department’s strong research focus and its numerous resources (e.g., databases, research seminars with external speakers, brown-bag presentation of faculty and students’ research, topic-focused reading groups, career planning, skills-enhancement workshops, international conferences, contacts with practitioners, etc.).

As part of the CentER’s graduate school, you will also benefit from the excellent research and work environment that TISEM offers, with a community of graduate students from many countries, access to a wide array of research databases, excellent facilities to conduct experiments, state-of-the-art library, a programming group, and support for grant applications..

Upon successful completion of your courses and your research work, as demonstrated by a submitted and approved PhD dissertation and the subsequent defense, you will be awarded a doctoral degree by Tilburg University.

80% of the position’s time will be dedicated to the completion of your PhD research, and 20% to the acquisition of other key skills through teaching courses and supervising master/bachelor theses within the department.

1. An academic Master’s or MPhil/Research Master’s degree in business studies, economics, econometrics, operations research or another relevant field that is deemed an equivalent to the previous education profile.
2. Completed the previous degree with an excellent GPA (top 5% of class as guideline)
3. Proficiency in English to be proven by means of an IELTS score of at least 7.0, with no sub scores below 6.5, a TOEFL score of at least 100 (internet based) or 600 (paper based), a Cambridge CAE (at least B) or a Cambridge CPE. Exemptions can be provided upon request to native English speakers or to candidates who have obtained their bachelor’s and master’s degree in English in Europe, Canada, USA, Australia, or New Zealand.
4. A solid quantitative background, to be proven in one of the following ways:

• 1. candidates with a MSc or MPhil degree from a Research University in the European Union need to have at least 24 ECTS credits in quantitative and research methods courses during their BSc and/or MSc or MPhil programs. If this is not the case, but you would still like to be considered for admission, you are welcome to hand in a GRE or GMAT test score to show your quantitative competences.
  2. candidates with a MSc or MPhil degree from a university outside the European Union: please provide a recent GRE or GMAT test score.

Our offer
Tilburg University offers excellent benefits in a pleasant working environment:

• Employment of 1 FTE.
• Salary between €3,059 (year 1) and € 3,881 (year 4) gross per month for full-time employment (UFO-profile Promovendus, salary scale P).
• This is a vacancy for a PhD in accordance with Article 2.3 paragraph 8 sub b CLA DU. You will initially be given a temporary contract for the duration of 18 months. The evaluation will take place after about 14 months. Upon a positive evaluation, this contract will be followed by a new fixed-term contract of 30 months. (program is 4 years, fulltime).
• Vacation pay of 8% and a year-end bonus of 8.3%.
• Over 8 weeks of vacation leave.
• Hybrid working with home working allowance (€2 p/day) and internet allowance (€25 p/month).
• Reimbursement sustainable commuting: walking, cycling, and public transport.
• Options model for additional leave, pension, a bicycle or personal training.
• Moving allowance (subject to conditions). Tax allowance via 30% rule for international employees (if applicable).
• Pension through ABP.
• Ample training offer: personal development, leadership, education, research or language courses. 
• Inclusive work culture: everyone is welcome, equal opportunities. 
• A green, inviting campus that’s easily accessible by public transport, and close to international flight hubs (Eindhoven, Brussels, Amsterdam)

For more information, please see our website and the CLA Dutch Universities.

Tilburg University is an academic, inclusive, and engaged community. Together with nearly 3,000 employees, we are committed to broad prosperity, sustainability, and inclusion for current and future generations. We develop and share knowledge to meet the needs of people and our society. This is how we contribute to solving complex social issues and help society move forward.

We educate our 19,500 students of 110 nationalities to become responsible leaders with knowledge, skills, and character. With our education and research for broad prosperity, we place particular emphasis on themes such as mental and preventive care, an inclusive labor market, the energy transition, and digitalization.

About TiSEM
Tilburg School of Economics and Management (TiSEM) is one of Europe's leading centers for research in business and economics, with research rankings consistently among Europe's top 10 across various business and economics domains. In addition to the strong research focus and collegial research climate, it offers a wide variety of educational programs at the undergraduate and graduate levels, with about 7,000 students enrolled. The School is well connected to both policymakers and industry in the region and internationally, providing ample opportunities to create impact through research.

About Tilburg
Tilburg is a mid-sized city in the south of the Netherlands, known for its vibrant international community and excellent connectivity to the rest of Europe. The city has undergone significant development over the past decade and now offers a rich array of amenities, including world-class restaurants, concert halls, museums, waterfront cafés, and abundant parks and forests. Both the Netherlands and Tilburg consistently rank among the top places in the world for quality of life. English is widely spoken, and for most day-to-day activities, knowledge of Dutch is not required

About Tilburg University’s finance department

Tilburg University’s Finance Department is widely recognized as the leading finance group in the Netherlands—both in research productivity and in the placement of our PhD graduates—and consistently ranks among the top five in Europe. We have an outstanding track record of placing our PhD students at world-class academic institutions (including Chicago Booth, Boston University, Rotman, USC Marshall, Bocconi, and HEC Paris) and at major central banks and policy institutions such as the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the Federal Reserve Board, the European Central Bank, De Nederlandsche Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. Our department comprises more than twenty research-active faculty members working across asset pricing, asset management, behavioral finance, banking, corporate finance, and household finance.

Want to know more about the PhD?
Would you like to know more before applying? Feel free to contact Stefano Cassella at s.cassella@tilburguniversity.edu.