Lasse Heje Pedersen

Lasse Heje Pedersen is a finance professor at Copenhagen Business School and NYU Stern, and a principal at AQR Capital Management. His research has been foundational in several areas of quantitative finance: liquidity risk (with Amihud), limits of arbitrage (with Shleifer), carry trading, time-series momentum, and the betting-against-beta factor. His book "Efficiently Inefficient" (2015) bridges academic theory and hedge fund practice. Pedersen is one of the most cited finance researchers of his generation, with direct influence on how AQR and many other quantitative firms construct strategies. His research on "margin spirals" — showing how funding constraints and margin calls can amplify price declines in a self-reinforcing cycle — provided an important theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics of crisis episodes including the 2008 financial crisis and the March 2020 market dislocation. He has also contributed research on ESG investing and sustainable finance from a systematic, factor-based perspective.