The Centre for Analytical Finance (CAF) at ISB organises two research conferences each year, one in the summer in August, and the other in the winter in December. The first conference was held in summer, 2004. The bi-annual research conferences have evolved into a major international research forum, with a consistent increase in the number and quality of submissions from researchers around the world, many of them with no prior affiliation with CAF or ISB. For the Winter Research Conference 2006, we received forty-five submissions for ten spots on the programme. The number as well as the high quality of many submissions resulted in keen competition for selection. The selection committee included some of the top researchers in market microstructure in the world: Hank Bessembinder (Utah), Terry Hendershott (Berkeley), Narayan Naik (London Business School), Avanidhar Subrahmanyam (UCLA), S. Viswanathan (Duke), and Pradeep Yadav (Oklahoma). Pradeep was also the chairperson of the programme committee.
         The Winter Research Conference 2006 was held on the ISB campus during December 18-19. The theme of the conference was ‘Microstructure of International Financial Markets’. The conference was sponsored by the National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX) and National Stock Exchange of India (NSE).
         Apart from paper presentations and discussions by eminent researchers around the world, the conference had several other highlights. The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) offered a $5,000 award for the best paper presented at the CAF Winter 2006 Research Conference.( blurb) The award was shared between Tarun Chordia (Emory University), Richard Roll and Avanidhar Subrahmanyam (UCLA) for their paper: Liquidity and Market

Efficiency and Karl B. Diether, Kuan-Hui Lee and Ingrid M. Werner (Ohio State University) for their paper: Can Short-sellers Predict Returns? Daily Evidence. Significantly, until now, NYSE had given similar awards at only two prestigious global research conferences in finance: European Finance Association Conference and Western Finance Association Conference in the USA.
          Pradeep Yadav (Oklahoma) presented a report on the joint research underway by CAF (ISB) and NSE, during the CAF Winter Research Conference 2006. Besides Pradeep Yadav, the project team includes Sankar De (ISB), Sudip Gupta (ISB) and Kiran Kumar (ISB).
         A panel discussion on “Evolving Nature of World Stock Exchanges: What Does the Future Hold?” was held during the CAF Winter Research Conference 2006. Several major forces of change are sweeping across the stock exchanges around the world, including demutualization, consolidation, and specialist entities splitting up the traditional exchange functions, such as capital raising and trading. In the process, the identity as well as the role of the exchanges is being transformed, sometimes quite drastically. What does the future hold for them? To deliberate this important issue, CAF brought together, on a single platform, a panel of leading academicians and heads of major exchanges around the world. The panel included top researchers in the field, Ingrid Werner (Ohio State University) and Pradeep Yadav (Oklahoma University), leaders of major stock exchanges, Paul Bennett (New York Stock Exchange), Ravi Narain (National Stock Exchange, India) and P H Ravikumar (National Commodity and Derivatives Exchange Limited (NCDEX), and multilateral agencies, Joshua Felman (International Monetary Fund). The session was moderated by Pradeep Yadav.