The 2008 China International Conference in Finance (CICF) was held in North East China’s city of Da Lian during July 2-5, 2008. The conference brought together over 400 scholars in the area of finance from leading universities and academic institutions worldwide.

Wang Jiang, Director of China Center of Financial Research (CCFR) of Tsinghua University, Professor in Finance at MIT, U.S. and Special-term Professor of Tsinghua SEM, served as Chairman of the conference. Cao Quanwei, Professor at Pennsylvania State University, U.S. and Special-term Professor of Tsinghua SEM served as Chairman of the academic committee of the conference. Professor Liao Li, Executive Vice Director of CCFR and Associate Dean of Tsinghua SEM served as the Secretary General of the conference.

Miuchel Brennan, Professor of Finance at University of California- Los Angeles Anderson School of Management, and former president of the American Finance Association; and H. Gifford Fong, President of Gifford Fong Associates delivered keynote speeches at the conference.

742 academic papers (524 in English) were submitted to the conference; 240 of them were accepted. Among them, 65 were in Chinese, 175 in English, with topics covering 39 areas including corporate finance, investment and risk management, asset pricing, etc.. 240 academicians reported their research outputs in their papers at 60 panels during the four-day conference. Seven papers from the United States, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Chinese mainland won TCW Award for Best Academic Papers, Xia Yihong Award for Best Academic Paper and CICF Award for Best Academic Paper.

Held in 2002 for the first time, the China International Conference in Finance is co-organized by China Center of Financial Research of Tsinghua University, and Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology , U.S. The conference calls for papers targeting at academic community in finance worldwide during October to November of each year. The submitted paper will be strictly selected by the paper review committee of the conference made up of world renowned scholars in finance. The selection result will be announced in March of the next year; selected papers will be presented at the conference held in July. Now the conference has become the largest conference in finance in Asia with highest academic level.