Risk Premium Invest is an advisory boutique based in Paris, founded by Olivier Davanne.
It provides two types of services:
- Analyse the current dynamics of key markets. Markets depend on three sorts of fundamentals: expected pay-offs, discount rates (linked to monetary policies) and risk premia on different asset classes. We believe that we have built a good understanding of the complex dynamics of these three factors.
- Build “optimal” asset allocations based on investment horizon, risk aversion and expected risk premia. In particular, we strongly believe that diversified funds managed with a long term horizon, often as a receptacle for pension savings, could be made much more effective (see the part on Risk Premia Investing).
Olivier Davanne has a long experience of financial markets and economic policy making, both as a practitioner and as a scholar.
On the practical side, he was for four years (1993-1997) a Senior European Economist working for Goldman Sachs in Paris and London. From 2000 to 2015, he was co-head and founding partner of a regulated asset management boutique (DPA INVEST) in Paris. He was macroeconomic advisor to two French ministers (the Finance Minister in 1992-1993 and the Labor and Social Affairs Minister in 1997-1998).
On the theoretical side, he began his career in the department in charge of economic studies at the French Finance Ministry. Since 2000, he teaches at Paris-Dauphine University a course for master students, explaining how the dynamics of financial markets is linked, sometimes loosely, to the dynamics of the real economy (“the macroeconomic fundamentals of portfolio management”, for interested French speakers, the 2022-2023 slides and reading material are available here). Between 2012 and 2017, he taught Financial Regulation in the Master in Financial Regulation and Risk Management at Sciences-Po Paris. His PhD dissertation was on “financial markets failures and government interventions”.
Olivier Davanne has been a member of several official bodies advising the French government on policies (at the French Council of Economic Analysis from 1997 to 2003, the Pensions Advisory Council from 2000 to 2001 and the AMF’s Scientific Advisory Board from 2004 to 2013). A graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique and ENSAE, he holds a PhD from Paris-Dauphine University.
