Courses

Courses and workshops organized within the NFN are open to finance PhD students and faculty from all Nordic universities or business schools irrespective of whether their home institution is a member of the NFN.

NFN Travel Grant

The NFN offers Travel Grants for attending PhD students in finance coming from Nordic institutions outside of the country where a given course takes place. To apply for the Travel Grant, please use the form below and send it to the NFN office at nfn (@) aalto.fi. Remember to ask your supervisor to also send a short recommendation email. Please send the application well in advance to make sure that the NFN office has time to process your application and you have a chance to ensure the cheapest tickets available.

Travel Grant Application Form (.xlsx)

Past Courses

You can consult a list of past courses here

Forthcoming Courses

	Finance and Growth: The Roles of Financial Development, Institutions, and Shareholder Primacy
Organizer	Graduate School of Finance / Aalto University
Instructor	David McLean (Georgetown University)
Dates	August 12-14, 2026
Place	Aalto University School of Business, Espoo, Finland
Information	This course explores the links between finance, law, and economic growth. We begin by asking whether finance causes economic growth, and then turn to the law and finance literature on how legal institutions shape financial development. Finally, we examine shareholder capitalism—the idea that firms should maximize shareholder value—and its implications for investment, innovation, and the broader economy, connecting it back to both the finance-growth and law-and-finance literatures. More information on the course page
Applications	Please see course website for instructions. The deadline for applications is August 2, 2026.
Travel Grant	NFN offers Travel Grants for attending PhD students in finance coming from Nordic institutions outside of Finland. See instructions at the top of the page. NOTE: The NFN office is closed for summer holidays in July. Please make sure to submit your travel grant application before the beginning of July.

	Banking Regulation, Supervision and Financial Stability
Organizer	Graduate School of Finance / Aalto University
Instructor	Thorsten Beck (European University Institute and Florence School of Banking and Finance)
Dates	August 26-28, 2026
Place	Aalto University School of Business, Espoo, Finland
Information	The course provides an overview of the relevant issues in bank regulation, supervision and financial stability, focusing on policy-relevant issues and empirical research. The course provides an overview of recent and current research in these areas, and students will learn how to assess the impact of regulatory reforms and new technologies, including different empirical methodologies. At the end of the course, students should have a clear understanding of the relevant topics, methodologies and potential research opportunities in this field. More information on the course page
Applications	Please see course page for instructions. The deadline for applications is August 9, 2026.
Travel Grant	NFN offers Travel Grants for attending PhD students in finance coming from Nordic institutions outside of Finland. See instructions at the top of the page.

	Topics in Household Finance
Organizer	Lund University
Instructor	Kaveh Majlesi (Monash Business School)
Dates	November 2-6, 2026
Place	Lund University, Lund, Sweden
Information	This course provides a graduate-level introduction to the field of Household Finance. Rather than attempting to offer an exhaustive overview of the literature, the course uses ten 90-minute sessions to explore selected topics in depth. These include the determinants and consequences of households’ wealth allocation, with particular emphasis on participation in and investment in risky assets, as well as household consumption and borrowing decisions. The course is designed to develop students’ ability to read and critically evaluate the academic literature and, ultimately, to use it as a basis for developing new ideas for their own research. Course syllabus
Applications	Please register with the course administrator asli.kilicaslan(@)nek.lu.se.
Travel Grant	NFN offers Travel Grants for attending PhD students in finance coming from Nordic institutions outside of Sweden. See instructions at the top of the page.

	PhD Mini-Course on Private Credit Markets
Organizer	Graduate School of Finance / Aalto University
Instructor	Sascha Steffen (Frankfurt School of Finance & Management)
Dates	Spring/early summer 2027 – exact dates tba
Place	Aalto University School of Business, Espoo, Finland
Information	Private credit has moved from a niche corner of the loan market to a core segment of corporate finance that now competes directly with banks and the syndicated loan market. The course asks three questions in turn. First, why these lenders exist: what theory and evidence say about which borrowers are financed by banks, by public markets, and by private funds, and how that boundary moved after the post-crisis reforms. Second, what is inside the contract and what we can actually measure: loan terms, monitoring and renegotiation, PIK and amendments, and the valuation, ratings and performance-measurement problems that arise when the asset has no market price. Third, how fragility is private credit? Private credit funds are themselves levered, so we turn to their liability side, i.e. bank credit lines, securitizations, unsecured bonds and redeemable retail equity, and to what this implies for rollover and run risk, bank–nonbank interconnectedness, and the policy debate at the ESRB, FSB and IMF. Throughout, the course is organized around the data: what BDC filings, fund-level and loan-level datasets can and cannot identify, and which open questions are ready to be written.
Applications	TBA
Travel Grant	NFN offers Travel Grants for attending PhD students in finance coming from Nordic institutions outside of Finland. See instructions at the top of the page.