Elyas Fermand

Elyas Fermand serves as Assistant Professor of Finance at Santa Clara University's Leavey School of Business and Faculty Director for the SCU Real Estate Institute, where he joined in fall 2021 after completing his PhD at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.

His educational background includes:

• PhD in Finance, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School
• MA in Economics, Duke University
• BSc in Biotechnology and Economics, University of Waterloo

Professor Fermand's research program bridges institutional finance and household behavior, with dual expertise in real estate markets and behavioral economics. His work examines how commercial real estate investments by institutional investors create real economic impacts (particularly on employment), while simultaneously investigating how households form and act upon expectations under uncertainty. This unique intersection reveals how macro-level investment decisions propagate through to micro-level household economic behavior.

His publication trajectory shows increasing focus on institutional investor behavior, with recent work analyzing pension fund allocations to private equity (2023) and social-impact commercial real estate investments (2021), building upon foundational research on household uncertainty (2018). This progression demonstrates growing influence in both real estate finance and behavioral household economics domains.

Prior industry experience as Senior Quantitative Analyst in Residential Mortgage Credit Risk at Citizens Financial Group provides practical grounding for his academic research, creating valuable connections between theoretical frameworks and market realities in financial risk assessment.