Philip Howard
Leveraging Analytics

Philip Howard has always been fascinated by mathematics. As an undergraduate at UNC-Chapel Hill double-majoring in math and statistics, Howard thought he would pursue a career as an actuary upon graduation. But the more he learned, the more he wanted to learn, and Howard made the decision to earn a master’s in statistics with a Ph.D. in the discipline to follow.

But during his master’s degree studies, Howard took a finance class. Suddenly, his trajectory changed.

“That class really piqued my interest, and I decided to jump ships,” he says. “I finished my master’s in statistics, but earned my Ph.D. in finance.”

Howard’s work today both as the Joseph M. Bryan, Jr., Faculty Fellow in Banking and Finance and as a senior research associate at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise sits at the intersection of his quantitative background and finance, using theoretical models to evaluate monetary policy.

“It’s thinking about how if theoretically you have a modeled economy and you implement a new policy, what would be the impact?” Howard says. “Because until you actually put a policy into effect and have actual data, you don’t know what that impact will be, but if you can go off the theory, that can give you some guidance.”

One of his most recent projects involves analyzing hedge fund performance databases that inform investors who are allocating capital. Howard says the challenge has been that no one database holds all this information—some eight different vendors offer subscriptions to their data, and to get a complete picture of hedge fund performance, one would likely have to look at all of these sources.

“Historically, these databases have been very expensive, so if you only subscribe to one or two, you’re really missing the big picture,” he says. 

So Howard and the team he worked with at the Kenan Institute figured out a way to combine all the lists, creating their own distinct identifiers that allow researchers to easily merge and search multiple lists of data. 

“We want to lower the barrier to entry for academics to actually do research in this space,” he says. “And hopefully it will improve the quality of the research because you aren’t missing data.”

Howard says the team also began analyzing the data themselves to produce their own papers. The research has recently followed activist hedge funds, specifically looking at the performance of their actual investments.

“We can take two different regulatory filings—one that identifies hedge funds and one that identifies activists—and intersect it with our private databases on the performance side,” Howard says. “That way we can be certain the results are representative of the entire industry.”

Howard says that his research directly impacts the classes he teaches at Wake, as well. Through this work, Howard says he has gained new insights and methodologies for conducting quantitative research, harnessing new technologies and techniques such as machine learning to garner better results. He says exposure to that process, more so than the results of his research, has been beneficial to his students.

“When I’m teaching my students, I’m not teaching them about hedge funds or activism, I’m focusing on quantitative methods,” he says. “Those same methods I use in my research translate to what my students are learning in the classroom.”

Howard says this ability to conduct ongoing research while also remaining active in the classroom is one of the things he loves most about Wake Forest. And he says that the School of Business’ teacher-scholar model ultimately benefits both professors and students.

“Every school will say they’re pro teacher-scholar, but when you really look at the culture, it’s usually one or the other,” he says. “But at Wake, when they say teacher-scholar, they really mean it. It’s one of the things that attracted me to this school—you’re allowed to excel in both areas.”