Faculty

MBA, University of Southern California; BA, UCLA

Scott Abrams is an Assistant Professor of Clinical Finance and Business Economics. He specializes in corporate finance, financial analysis and valuation, and portfolio management. Professor Abrams teaches these subjects in the MBA, MS Finance, and Undergraduate programs. He is a two-time winner of the Golden Apple Teaching Award for the Full-Time MBA Core Program (2016 and 2021). Prior to joining the faculty at USC Marshall, he worked in the corporate finance groups at Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. and is an alumnus of Deloitte. He is a CFA Charterholder and is a licensed CPA.

Ph.D., M.A. University of California, Los Angeles, B.F.A. Tisch School of the Arts, New York University

Kenneth Ahern is an Associate Professor at the Marshall School of Business and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). His research is distinguished by the study of networks to study how economic outcomes spread from one agent to another through interactions, including interactions among industries, individuals, and information sharing. His research has been published in leading finance and economics journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Economics and Statistics, and has been cited in both the popular press and legislative hearings around the world. Before joining USC, Kenneth was on the faculty of the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.

PhD, University of Southern California; BA, Koc University

Rahsan Akbulut research interests include macroeconomics, labor economics, and household and family economics. Her research was published in Macroeconomic Dynamics. Prior to re-joining USC, she was a visiting Assistant Professor at Pomona College for 3 years. She taught Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, and Applied Regression analysis. Before her academic career began, Professor Akbulut worked as a financial controller at Daimler AG. in Istanbul, Turkey.

PhD, UCLA; MBA, Indiana University; BS, Purdue University

Duke Bristow is an expert on corporate finance and corporate governance, particularly in the areas of private equity and director education. He has published papers in economics, engineering, and law journals, and has advised Corporate Board Member magazine and other publications on matters involving corporate governance and director education since 1998. His research and teaching has received support from the National Institutes of Health, the NASDAQ, the four largest international audit firms, and a dozen national law firms. Professor Bristow is a director of Landec Corporation (Nasdaq: LNDC) and is the Faculty Director of the USC Corporate Governance Summit.

PhD Finance, MBA, UCLA; MS EE, UC- Berkeley; BS EE, University of Michigan

Ty Callahan is a finance scholar with interests that include the behavior of traders, market liquidity and volume, and mergers and acquisition. He has published papers in the Review of Futures Markets and the Journal of Physical Chemistry. Professor Callahan has served as an ad-hoc referee for the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Markets, Journal of Empirical Finance, and International Review of Finance. Before joining USC, he was on the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin.

PhD, University of Illinois; MA, Universidade Catolica de Brasilia; BA, Universidade de Brasilia

Odilon Camara is an economist who specializes in microeconomics and political economy. He studies how individuals strategically use information to persuade decision makers. He also studies the extent to which voters can use re-elections to create political accountability and discipline elected officials. His research has been published in American Economic Review, Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Politics, and Games and Economic Behavior. Before receiving his PhD, Professor Camara worked in the banking industry.

PhD, BS, MIT

Tom Chang is an associate professor of Finance and Business Economics at the Marshall School of Business and a research fellow at both the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics and the Dornsife Center for Economic and Social Research. He received a BS in Physics (1998) and a PhD in economics (2009), both from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His current research focuses on better understanding individual decision-making and its implications for firm behavior.

PhD, MA, University of Rochester; BS, Fudan University

Baizhu Chen studies macroeconomics and international economics, with an emphasis on China. His work has been published in the Journal of Peace Research, European Journal of Political Economy, China Economic Review, Applied Financial Economics, Social Choice and Welfare, and Journal of Macroeconomics. He is Senior Researcher at the Institute of Finance and Banking at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, chief economist of Sino-Century Capital, a VC firm in Shanghai, and former president of the Chinese Economists Society. He is academic director for Marshall's GEMBA program, and a recipient of the Golden Apple Award.

PhD, MBA, MA, University of Chicago; BA, University of Notre Dame

Jim Cunningham is an economist who specializes in macroeconomics and public finance, and has conducted research on taxes, interest rates, and health economics, among other topics. He teaches in the undergraduate, full-time MBA, PM.MBA, and EMBA programs. In 2010, he received Marshall's Golden Apple award for MBA instruction, and the "Par for the Course" award from the San Diego EMBA program. In addition to his extensive teaching experience, Professor Cunningham has worked as a financial analyst and consulted extensively on antitrust issues.

Diego Daruich is a macroeconomist (broadly defined), with particular interests in human capital accumulation, inequality, and intergenerational mobility. After completing his undergraduate studies in economics in his native Argentina, Diego obtained a Master in Economics and Finance from CEMFI in 2012 and a PhD in Economics from New York University in 2018. Before joining USC Marshall, Diego worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Ricardo is interested in firm dynamics and asset pricing. His latest research uses micro-level data to study how belief formation and corporate governance regulations shape distributional and aggregate outcomes.
Before joining USC Marshall, Ricardo obtained a Master in Economics from El Colegio de México and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.

JD, Santa Clara University; BS, University of Southern California

Kerry Fields teaches business law, employment, and real estate law courses in the undergraduate and MBA programs, both residential and online. He has extensive experience in business law and business transactional matters. He is a frequent media commentator on business ethics issues. He has been recognized with several awards, including the Golden Apple Award, Evan C. Thompson Faculty Teaching and Learning Innovation Award, the USC Parents Association Teaching and Mentoring Award, and the Gamma Sigma Alpha Professor of the Year Award. He is a co-author of three leading university level textbooks with two business law and ethics texts under development.

JD, Chapman University; BS, University of Southern California

Kevin Fields is the Academic Director of the Masters of Business for Veterans (MBV) program. He teaches business law and real estate law to Marshall’s undergraduate and graduate students. Professor Fields is a practicing attorney specializing in real estate and business litigation. He has tried real estate, employment and business cases in state and federal courts and administrative forums. He is also a licensed California broker. He has received several Golden Apple teaching awards as well as being named the Professor of the Year by Gamma Sigma Alpha (the National Academic Greek Honor society). He is an AV Preeminent rated attorney by Martindale-Hubbell. He is a co-author of several real estate law textbooks including Contemporary Real Estate Law 2nd Edition, and Essentials of Real Estate Law. Both textbooks are published by Wolters Kluwer Law & Business. He is currently completing a business law textbook scheduled for national release in 2020.

Ph.D., M.S. California Institute of Technology, B.A. Northwestern University

Cary Frydman is an economist who specializes in behavioral finance and experimental economics. His research is interdisciplinary, drawing on principles from psychology and neuroscience to answer questions in finance and economics. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Finance. His work has been published in the leading finance and economics journals and he has won awards for both his research and teaching in the core curriculum at Marshall.

Marco Giacoletti joined the Department of Finance and Business Economics in 2017, after earning his PhD in Finance from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His research interests include asset pricing, macro-finance and household finance. He has recently received the Cubist Systematic Strategies PhD Candidate Award for Outstanding Research, and his research has been presented at the Western Finance Association and the American Finance Association meetings.

PhD, MS, University of Wisconsin; AB, Harvard University

Richard Green is an expert on housing markets, housing policy, mortgage finance, and urban growth. His research has been published in a wide array of scholarly journals and popular media outlets, and he recently served as president of the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association. Professor Green is director of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. Before joining USC, he was a faculty member at George Washington University and the University of Wisconsin, and he served as principal economist and director of financial strategy and policy analysis at Freddie Mac.

Dr. Griffiths holds a Ph.D. from The University of Western Ontario in Canada along with an M.A. (Economics), an M.B.A. (Finance), and two undergraduate degrees.

Dr. Griffiths joined the FBE faculty in August 2016. Previously, he was the Jack Anderson Professor of Finance at Miami University and has served on the faculties of Thunderbird, The Garvin School of International Management, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and Lehigh University. He was a Visiting Professor at Texas A&M and NYU’s Stern School of Business. The recipient of several awards for innovative teaching and outstanding research papers, Dr. Griffiths has published numerous articles in leading academic journals in finance and entrepreneurship.

PhD, University of Chicago; BA, UC-San Diego

Larry Harris holds the Fred V. Keenan Chair in Finance at the USC Marshall School of Business. His research, teaching, and consulting address regulatory and practitioner issues in trading and investment management. He authored Trading and Exchanges: Market Microstructure for Practitioners, a widely regarded “must read” for entrants into the securities industry. Professor Harris served as SEC Chief Economist from 2002-2004. He currently serves as lead independent director of Interactive Brokers (IBKR), director of the Selected Funds, and research coordinator of the Q-Group. Dr. Harris received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago, and is a CFA charterholder.

BA 1980‚ Mathematics, UCLA, MA 1983‚ Economics, University of Chicago, PhD 1985‚ Economics, University of Chicago

David Hirshleifer is Robert G. Kirby Chair in Behavioral Finance, a Fellow and former-President of the American Finance Association, and an associate of the NBER. He served as Executive Editor of the Review of Financial Studies, director of the American and Western Finance Associations, and as an editor at other leading finance, economics, and business journals. His Presidential Address to the American Finance Association advocates an emerging paradigm, social economics and finance, which studies how the social transmission of ideas, information and behavior affects markets. His research has won distinguished awards, and he has been keynote speaker at many conferences internationally.

Ph.D., M.Phil., M.A., B.A., Yale University

Gerard Hoberg's research is primarily in the area of empirical corporate finance with a focus on innovation, mergers, IPOs, disclosure, informational environments, and industrial organization. His work often focuses on issues relating to important theories that have proved difficult to test, and to issues that are of importance to regulatory agencies and financial stability. He is known for methodological contributions that bring technologies from computational linguistics into finance.

PhD, MA, University of Southern California; BA, Florida Atlantic University.

Fatemah Ibrahimi Nazarian is a financial economist who specializes in macroeconomics and corporate finance. She has conducted research on the effect of fluctuations in exchange rates and macroeconomic variables and policies on international stock markets. Her research has been published in Global Portfolio Diversification and International Review of Economics. Professor Nazarian has served as a research associate at the Center for Futures Research, as a research fellow at the Energy Modeling Center, and as CFO of an export company. Winner of the Golden Apple Teaching Award for Finance and Business Economics. Her current research involves risk and return to investment, and exchange rate exposure in emerging nations.

PhD, University of Minnesota; BS, Middle East Technical University

Ayse Imrohoroglu is a macroeconomist who specializes in understanding business cycles, inflation, unemployment insurance, and social security. Her work has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, and Journal of Monetary Economics. She received a National Science Foundation grant in 1992 to investigate the effects of social security programs on economies with imperfect insurance. From 2004 to 2007, she was Chair of the Department of Finance and Business Economics.

PhD, University of Minnesota; MS, BS, Middle East Technical University

Selahattin Imrohoroglu is a macroeconomist who studies taxes, savings, and social security. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, International Economic Review, Review of Economic Dynamics, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, and Economic Inquiry. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control and a member of the American Economic Association, Econometric Society, and the Society for Economic Dynamics.

PhD in Finance, University of Texas at Austin; BBA, Baylor University

Erica Jiang's research focuses on financial intermediation, household finance, and financial regulation. Her recent work studies the financing and liquidity issues of non-bank lenders in the US residential mortgage market.

PhD, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; BA, Pomona Collage

Christopher Jones conducts research on empirical asset pricing and financial econometrics. He is an expert on volatility modeling and its application to option pricing and fixed income. He currently teaches courses on investment management. Prior to USC, Professor Jones was on the faculty at the University of Rochester.

PhD, Stanford University; MS, Caltech; BS, Oklahoma State University

Scott Joslin is a financial economist whose research focuses on capital markets, in particular, the study of bond and options markets and their interaction with the macroeconomy. His research involves sophisticated econometric and statistical techniques, and development of methods to solve computationally difficult problems. Professor Joslin's work has been published in journals that include American Economic Review and Review of Financial Studies. Prior to joining USC, he was on the faculty of MIT's Sloan School of Management.

Ph.D., University of British Columbia; MA, BA.Sc., Simon Fraser University

Chad Kendall is an economist that specializes in financial economics and political economy. He is particularly interested in questions related to the acquisition and use of information in these domains. His work has been published in Econometrica and the American Economic Review. He previously worked as a semiconductor engineer.

PhD, MA, The Wharton School; MS, Goethe University Frankfurt; BS, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Mete Kilic joined the Department of Finance and Business Economics upon completing his PhD in Finance at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania in 2017. His research interests lie in the areas of asset pricing, macroeconomics, firm investment and hiring decisions, as well as financial derivatives. He has received the 2017 Cubist Systematic Strategies PhD Candidate Award for Outstanding Research.

PhD, MBA, University of Chicago; MA, Tilburg University

Arthur Korteweg is a financial economist whose research interests include corporate finance, private equity, and alternative assets more generally. His corporate finance work aims to quantify the costs and benefits of leverage and the determinants of corporate capital structures. In his private equity research, Arthur focuses on investment decisions in alternative asset classes such as venture capital, leveraged buyout, real estate, and art. Arthur’s work has been published in leading journals including the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies, and has been cited in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, and Forbes, amongst others. Prior to joining Marshall in 2014, Arthur was an Associate Professor of Finance at Stanford's Graduate School of Business.

PhD, University of Southern California

Suh-Pyng Ku is a Professor of Clinical Finance & Business Economics at USC Marshall School of Business. Her teaching and research specialties include corporate finance, portfolio management, and security valuation. She teaches corporate finance and applied investment management courses in the MBA program. In addition, she serves as the Vice Dean for Graduate Programs and Director of the USC Marshall Center for Investment Studies. Previously, Professor Ku served as USC's vice provost and executive director of continuing education and summer programs. Prior to that, she served as USC's chief technology officer for enhanced learning, Associate Dean for Marshall MBA Program and Marshall's chief information officer. She is the 2014 Golden Apple Teaching Award Winner for the Full-Time MBA Core Program and a 2014 Steven B. Sample Teaching and Mentoring Award Nominee, USC Office for Parent Programs. Professor Ku received her Ph.D. degree in Finance from USC.

Yaron Levi is an economist who specializes in individual decision making, household finance, and behavioral economics. His research has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics and Review of Financial Studies, and has been profiled in the New York Times, Money, and the Harvard Business Review. His current research uses big data and field experiment to understand the influence of innovations in financial technology and information design on consumer and investor behavior.

JD, University of San Francisco; MBA, University of Pennsylvania; BS, UC-Berkeley

Lloyd Levitin is an expert in utility diversification, having been Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Pacific Enterprises (now Sempra Energy), a Fortune 500 diversified energy utility. He has consulted for domestic and international companies, and for the state of California. Professor Levitin was on the board of the Financial Executives Institute and President of the Los Angeles Chapter. He has testified before the California Regulatory Commission and the Senate Finance Committee. Professor Levitin's articles have appeared in Hastings Law Journal and the American Gas Association magazine

Wenhao obtained his Ph.D. in Finance from Stanford Graduate School of Business on June 2019.

Wenhao Li joined the Department of Finance and Business Economics in 2019. His research interests include financial intermediation, asset pricing, and macroeconmics.

PhD, BA, UC-Santa Barbara

Tony Marino is an economist who specializes in organizational economics and the economics of regulation. He has published articles on dynamic macroeconomics, public utility regulation, conservation, product liability, safety regulation, managerial contracting, and organizational theory, in the Review of Economic Studies, Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, RAND Journal of Economics, and Review of Financial Studies. Professor Marino served as Chair of the Department of Finance and Business Economics from 1997 to 2000. Before joining USC, he was a faculty member at the University of Kansas, and he has held visiting appointments at UC-Santa Barbara and Gothenburg University.

PhD, MA, University of Chicago; BA, University of Washington

John Matsusaka is an expert on direct democracy and corporate organization who publishes in economics, finance, law, and political science. His most recent book is Let the People Rule: How Direct Democracy Can Meet the Populist Challenge. (2020). Matsusaka provides commentary for media outlets including ABC News, CNN, Fox News, NPR, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times. He is executive director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute, held visiting appointments at Stanford, UCLA, Caltech, and University of Chicago, and consulted for the White House Council of Economic Advisors.

JD, Stanford University School of Law; MBA, University of Chicago School of Business; BA, Grinnell College.

Steve Moyer is an Adjunct Professor. Prior to joining the faculty at USC, he was a Portfolio Manager with PIMCO where he managed the PIMCO Distressed Credit Fund. In his over 30 years of experience in the investment industry he has also been affiliated with Tennenbaum Capital, Imperial Capital, BAML, Drexel Burnham Lambert and First Boston. Mr. Moyer began his career as a lawyer. Mr. Moyer received his B.A. from Grinnell College, an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago and a J.D. from Stanford. Steve is the author of Distressed Debt Analysis and several other publications in the field.

PhD, MA, University of Chicago; BA, UCLA

Kevin J. Murphy is an internationally known expert on executive compensation, and is the author of more than fifty articles, cases, books, or book chapters relating to compensation and incentives in organizations. Results from his research on executive compensation have appeared in the popular, business and professional press. From 2004 to 2007, he served as Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at the Marshall School, and is currently serving as Chair of the Department of Finance and Business Economics. Before joining USC, Professor Murphy was on the faculty of the University of Rochester and Harvard Business School.

PhD, MPhil, Tilburg University; MS, Duisenberg School of Finance Amsterdam; MA, BA, Higher School of Economics Moscow

Katya Neretina joined the Department of Finance and Business Economics in 2019. She received her PhD from Tilburg University. Before her PhD, she did a research internship at the Dutch Central Bank. Katya’s research interests are at the intersection of finance, political economy, and competition. Her work highlights the anti-competitive effects of corporate lobbying, and of concentration in the bond underwriting industry and in the legal profession.

Emily Nix’s interests include labor economics and applied microeconomics. Her current research focuses on human capital formation, the economics of crime, and the gender income gap. Professor Nix received her PhD at Yale, and before joining the faculty at USC Marshall worked at University College London. She has also previously served as a consultant to the World Bank and is an external researcher for the Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy in Uppsala, Sweden.

Andrii’s research focuses on the interaction between local housing and labor markets and the macroeconomy. He analyzes the implications of housing supply and land use regulation on aggregate productivity and wage and housing price differences across metropolitan areas in the U.S. Andrii also studies relocation subsidies as a supplement to unemployment benefits and investigates their potential effects on unemployment and productivity. Andrii completed undergraduate studies in economics in his native Ukraine. Following a three-year stint in investment banking, Andrii pursued graduate studies, and obtained PhD in economics from Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona and Barcelona Graduate School of Economics in 2017.

Chris holds a BS in Chemical Engineering (1997) and a PhD in finance (2007), both at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to teaching at Marshall, Chris has served on the faculties of McGill University, UNC Chapel Hill, UCSD, Harvard Business School, and University of Washington. He teaches corporate finance, investments, real estate, and labor economics. His research interests include behavioral finance – which seeks to understand the psychological foundations of investor’s (sometimes incorrect) decision making. Another research interest is the intersection of urban economics and corporate finance, such as geographical patterns of white collar crime.

MBA, University of Southern California; BA, Loyola Marymount University

Julia Plotts specializes in financial analysis and valuation, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate finance. She has received numerous teaching awards including the Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence (11 times). Before joining USC, she worked in the investment-banking group of Banc of America Securities, where she was involved in the execution of M&A and capital raising via private/public offerings of equity and debt. She has consulted on shareholder value creation for a variety of firms.

PhD, University of Pennsylvania; MA, CORIPE Piemonte; BS, Ancona University

Vincenzo Quadrini is a macroeconomist who focuses on international economics, entrepreneurship, and financial contracts. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economic Studies, and other Journals. He has been coordinating editor for the Review of Economic Dynamics and he is a faculty research fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research. Before joining USC, Professor Quadrini was on the faculty at New York University, Duke University, and Pompeu Fabra University.

Rodney Ramcharan served as the first chief of the Systemic Financial Institutions and Markets Section at the Board Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He also worked for the International Monetary Fund from 2000-2010, primarily on emerging markets such as South Africa and in developing economies. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Dutch National Bank and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and a consultant to the Swedish Riksbank. His research has been published in the leading finance and economics journals, such as the American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial Economics.

Dr. Safarzadeh is the author and co-author of a number of research papers published in refereed journals and a textbook on Mathematical Methods in Economics Using <i>Mathematica</i>.

Mohammad Safarzadeh received his Ph.D in Economics from Claremont Graduate School, majoring in advanced quantitative methods in economics and international economics. He joined USC Marshall School of Business as senior lecturer in 2014, teaching quantitative methods in finance and forecasting and risk analysis in MS Finance program and international trade and macroeconomics in undergraduate program. Before joining USC, he taught at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona as professor of economics.

PhD, University of Iowa; BS, MA Western Michigan University

Mick Swartz is a financial economist whose research has been published in the Journal of Accounting, Auditing and Finance and Financial Review. In 1997, he won the ANBAR Award for a paper that is listed as among the top 150 business papers in the world. Professor Swartz has made over twenty presentations at finance conferences, has consulted the US Senate on derivatives legislation, appeared on CNN and NBC and appeared before state legislators concerning executive compensation and merger legislation. He has taught in many countries, including Ukraine, United Kingdom, Canada, Poland, and Germany. Before joining USC, Professor Swartz taught at Purdue University, where he was recognized as Distinguished Professor numerous times for his teaching.

PhD, UCLA; MBA, San Diego State University; BS, Bilkent Universiy

Selale Tuzel conducts research at the intersection of macro-finance and real estate, both at the theoretical and the empirical front. Her work has been published in many top finance, management, and economics journals, including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies.