Richard Fairchild PhD is Senior Lecturer in Corporate Finance in the School of Management, University of Bath, UK.  His research and teaching focuses on behavioural finance/behavioural economics, and entrepreneur/venture capital contracting and relationships.  Within behavioural finance, he is particularly interested in the application of social preference theory (non self-interested cooperative behaviour; altruism, fairness, trust, empathy) and emotions on investor behaviour. This has naturally taken his research interests towards social investment/social entrepreneurs, and into understanding the motives and incentives of social investors and social entrepreneurs.  Richard works (game-) theoretically, and is interested in the application of theory to practice, with impact.

As a complement to Richard’s behavioural finance approach, he works with the Psychology Department, University of Bath,in order to develop neuro-economic research around the motives and incentives of social and impact investors.  In this research, Richard works with social investment contacts.

 Research Summary

Richard’s research focuses around behavioural and emotional finance (both in terms of financial markets and behavioural corporate finance) and venture capital/entrepreneurship. Richard enjoys game-theory, and so this is the approach that he favours. In writing papers, he identifies the (game-) theoretical issues involved, and works with co-authors who work on the data analysis aspects. Recently, he has become interested in research in social enterprise/social investing: incorporating behavioural economics aspects, such as social preference theory (fairness, empathy, trust, altruism) that helps us to understand such non self-interested behaviour.  Relatedly, he is also becoming increasingly interested in neuro-economics/neuro-finance, and he is working with colleagues in the University’s Psychology Department on neuro-finance experiments. Also, please note that, in addition to academics, he works with external practitioners in developing research. Finally, he presents his research at national and international conferences.

I am interested in supervising students in all areas of corporate finance (eg, investment appraisal, capital structure, and dividend policy decisions), with particular focus on managerial incentives, behavioural and emotional corporate finance. A further research area that I am keen to supervise is venture capital and private equity. In addition, I welcome applications from students who are interested in the fields of social investing/impact investing and social entrepreneurship. I particularly welcomes applicants with an interest in both theoretical and empirical approaches.