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Education

2008 University of Arizona, B.S.
2010 University of Arizona, M.S.
2019 Florida Atlantic University, Ph.D.

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Courses Taught

Applied Investment Management,
Investments

Career Specialties

Shelton's primary research interests include investments, hedge funds, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), asset allocation strategies, corporate finance and options pricing.

Professional and Community Activities

Shelton's recent research is focused in three very different areas: corporate finance, options pricing and digital assets (Bitcoin). He recently published a paper with David Javakhadze of Florida Atlantic University in The Journal of Corporate Finance titled 'Executive Social Connections and Gender Pay Gaps' (2022). In this work, we focus on how male and female executives appear to leverage their social network connections differently in negotiating their pay packages. Austin also recently published an unrelated paper in Quantitative Finance with Charles Favreau of Duquesne University and Hayden Kane of the Federal Reserve entitled 'The limitations of extracting implied densities from options prices' (2021). In this work, they demonstrate via MC simulation that while mathematically sound, the empirical estimates from the world's leading model to extract the implied PDF and associated moments (vol, skew, and kurtosis) from a security's options chain are severely flawed in almost all read-world trading scenarios.

In addition, Shelton has a completed working paper entitled "Pricing Bitcoin: Stock-to-flow, Metcalfe's Law, or Something Else?" in which he considers whether the world's leading valuation frameworks for Bitcoin (the Stock-to-Flow model and Metcalfe's Law) appear to work to price the asset. Austin finds that both generally fail in explaining Bitcoin's return series, but find that Bitcoin's returns are perhaps surprisingly, very explainable when a myriad of technical, on-chain, macroeconomic and behavioral factors are considered.

Prior to joining ÂÌÅ«Ì컨°å in August of 2023, he was involved in the student FMA club as the Faculty Advisor and also taught the Student Managed Investment Fund courses at my prior university.