Halpern’s thesis is to marry academics with real-world experience
Like most academics, Paul Halpern’s office is filled with books and papers on a variety of research topics. But he’s not walled up in the ivory-towered world of academia: he practises what he preaches. As professor emeritus of finance and special advisor, Capital Markets Institute, with the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, Halpern strives to bring together the two sides of pension management: academics and practitioners.
“I think [academics] bring that independence: the ability to analyze lots of data and no internal pressure, in terms of what they should find,” he says, adding that knowledge sharing goes both ways. “As an academic, learning from practitioners is something that is really important. Some academics researching more applied areas think that practitioners have nothing helpful to contribute. I think that’s just wrong. I believe that if you can marry the two, you’re going to be a much better academic.”
Halpern joined Rotman in 1969 as a “green” PhD, finishing his dissertation on mergers. He then became involved with the Financial Research Foundation of Canada (FRF), which funded academic research in the finance area. Since its members and funders were institutional investors, it was an instructive introduction to the pension world. The FRF later disbanded, but for Halpern, it was just the beginning.
In 1988, Keith Ambachtsheer started the Canadian Investment Review (CIR), which subsequently became a Rogers publication. Halpern has played an active role in CIR over the years: organizing conferences, finding academics to prepare and present research, giving presentations and serving as chair of the editorial advisory board. His involvement is one of the highlights of his career. “I really enjoyed helping organize CIR,” he says. “Its success is not due to me; it’s due to the individuals at Rogers. But I think I certainly had some impact, in terms of…getting some interaction between practitioners and the academics, which is what I really like to see.”
Then, in 1994, a U.S. academic colleague founded LSV Asset Management and brought Halpern on board in 2006 to build the Canadian operations. “In retrospect, it was perfect, because its investment process has an academic perspective—it’s more quantitative—and also deals with institutional investors whom I had met through my CIR activities,” Halpern recalls.
Over the course of his unique career, Halpern has seen many changes in the pension investment industry. “When I first started, nobody thought systematically about risk—they thought about it but didn’t really have a handle [on it].” Now, he explains, not only has the range and sophistication of investment options increased, but there’s also greater interest in viewing investments through a risk management lens.
“Are they really investments that you look at separately, or do you consider them as just different ways to cut risk? The new approach would be, ‘If I’m really worried about risk, how does this [investment] fit in terms of the risk to my portfolio?’”
In a similar vein, Halpern is currently co-writing a book with Poonam Puri of Osgoode Law School and CIR editor Caroline Cakebread, The Art of the Possible: The ABCP Crisis in Canada. “Writing a book for the non-academic audience is very difficult,” he admits. “Getting the tone [and] the level right is next to impossible for me.”
As his work life slows down, Halpern looks forward to spending more time with his grandchildren, volunteering and maybe even taking French lessons. He says he has no ear for it, but if past experience is any guide, he’ll make it work—in practice as well as in theory.
Alyssa Hodder is editor of Benefits Canada.
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