# Profesor Viral Acharya and Colleagues Receive 10,000 Euro Grant

1 Press Releases December 1, 2009 ![](/sites/default/files/styles/246w/public/assets/images/uat_024818.gif?itok=vyb0e6SV)>

[Viral Acharya](http://w4.stern.nyu.edu/faculty/bio/viral-acharya), NYU Stern Professor of [Finance](/experience-stern/about/departments-centers-initiatives/academic-departments/finance), with colleagues Paolo Volpin at London Business School and Marco Pagano at Università di Napoli Federico II, received a 10,000 Euro grant from the BNP Paribas Hedge Fund Centre at HEC Paris for their paper, “Seeking Alpha: Excess Risk Taking and Competition for Managerial Talent."

Many people view compensation practices at large, complex financial institutions as a contributing factor to the financial crisis. The authors argue that a key issue is the difficulty of rewarding managers and traders in an efficient way when managers can choose riskier projects with short-term profits (a "fake alpha") and long-term risks, but have the ability to keep moving across firms.