Dr Alessia Testa

I graduated in Economics (B.Sc. Hons., Bocconi University, Italy) and I hold a M.A. Economics (University of Rochester, USA) and a D.Phil. in Economics (University of Oxford). I also hold a Doctorate in Mathematics (University of Trieste, Italy). Before joining the University of Portsmouth, I was a lecturer at City University London, a research fellow at the University of Bonn (Germany) and a teaching associate at the University of Oxford.

My research focuses on market microstructure and in particular on how the behavior of market participants impacts the informativeness of prices and the overall welfare. I study how the quality of the information available in the market determines information aggregation failures such as herding and contrarian behavior. I also investigate the influence of computer-based trading on the incentives for information acquisition of non-computer traders and on adverse selection in the market. Finally, I use signalling models to look at the price impact of the delegation relationship between investors and portfolio managers, and at how this affects the trading choices of the former, in particular in relation to the pricing anomalies of close-end funds.