Dion Bongaerts is an Associate Professor of Finance at RSM Erasmus university. He specializes in the behavior of credit rating agencies, the pricing of credit risky instruments, and the origins and effects of market illiquidity. His work has been presented at major conferences around the world, including the AFA, WFA, EFA and NBER meetings and published in top tier academic journals including the Journal of Finance. He has received several grants, including a Veni grant from the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO) and a Lamfalussy Fellowship from the ECB. Dr Bongaerts holds a PhD degree in Finance from the University of Amsterdam, an MSc in Econometrics from Maastricht University and has been a visiting scholar at Yale School of Management. Moreover, he has several years of professional experience as a risk management quant at ABN-AMRO bank.