Faculty

MBA, University of Southern California; BA, UCLA

Scott Abrams specializes in corporate finance, portfolio management, financial analysis and valuation, and microeconomics. He teaches these subjects in both the graduate and undergraduate programs at USC Marshall. In addition, Professor Abrams is the co-instructor for the MBA and Undergraduate Student Investment Fund classes. He is the 2016 Golden Apple Teaching Award Winner for the Full-Time MBA Core Program. Professor Abrams received his MBA from USC Marshall and is an alumnus of the SIF Program (2004). Prior to joining the faculty at USC Marshall, he worked in corporate finance at Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. In addition, he is an alumnus of Deloitte 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.

MRED, University of Southern California; BA, Reed College; B. Arch, Southern California Institute of Architecture

Robert Bridges specializes in real estate feasibility and urban economics. As a consultant, his clients include investment and development firms, and international and domestic investors. His editorials have been published in the Wall Street Journal, and has been cited by the Los Angeles Times and National Public Radio, among other outlets. Professor Bridges received USC's Steven Sample Award for Teaching and Marshall's Award for Community. He is a licensed architect who has received awards from the LA Business Council, the Ray Watt Foundation, the Concrete Reinforcing Steel Institute and the American Institute of Architects.

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, UC-Santa Barbara; BA, University of Redlands

Tim Campbell is an expert on financial intermediation. His research has been published in numerous leading journals including the Journal of Finance, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Journal of Financial Intermediation. He served as associate editor of the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Research, and Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics. He has been Academic Director of Marshall's highly ranked Executive MBA program since 2003, and previously served as Marshall's Deputy Dean for Programs and Planning.

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.

PhD, BA, UCLA

Harry DeAngelo specializes in corporate finance, with a focus on payout policy, capital structure, and corporate governance. His work has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, and American Economic Review, and he received the Jensen Prize for best corporate finance paper in the Journal of Financial Economics in 2004 and 2011. He served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Financial Economics and Journal of Finance, and as an American Finance Association director. Professor DeAngelo received a Golden Apple Award in 1999, and Business Week named him one of Marshall's two most popular teachers in 2000.

Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; MBA, Thunderbird School of Global Management; B.A., Koc University

Seda Durguner research interests are in the area of Banking and Financial Institutions, Corporate Finance, Household Finance, and Financial Economics. Before joining the Marshall School of Business, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in Boston and she was also a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in Washington DC. Professor Durguner presented several of her academic papers at governmental organizations such as U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Office of the Comptroller of Currency, FDIC, Bank of Canada, and also in national finance conferences. Professor Durguner also taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was recognized numerous times for her teaching. Her teaching portfolio includes microeconomics, managerial economics, corporate finance, and financial markets courses. Before her academic background, Professor Durguner worked several years as an analyst in the financial sector.

Ph.D., MBA, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Sena Durguner research interests are in the area of Banking and Financial Institutions, Corporate Finance, Small Business Finance, and Financial Economics. Before joining the Marshall School of Business, she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Northeastern University in Boston and she was also a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in Washington DC. Professor Durguner presented several of her academic papers at governmental organizations such as Federal Reserve Board, Office of the Comptroller of Currency, FDIC, Bank of Canada, and also in national finance conferences. Professor Durguner also taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she was recognized numerous times for her teaching. Her teaching portfolio includes microeconomics, economics statistics, and corporate finance courses. Before her academic background, Professor Durguner worked several years as an analyst in the financial sector.

PhD, MA, Stanford University; MBA, BS, Southern Methodist University

Wayne Ferson does research on models for security returns and on methods for evaluating the performance of managed portfolios. He holds the Ivadelle and Theodore Johnson Chair at USC. Ferson was formerly on the faculties of Boston College, the University of Washington, the University of Chicago and the Wharton School. He is a former President of the Society of Financial Studies and the Western Finance Association and a former Editor of the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Empirical Finance. He is the founding Executive Editor of the Review of Asset Pricing Studies. He has served as an Associate Editor for several journals and served for eight years as the Faculty Coordinator for the Ph.D program in Finance at the Marshall School.

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 teaches business law and real estate law to Marshall’s undergraduates. Professor Fields is a practicing attorney specializing in business litigation and representing clients in business and real estate transactions. He has tried real estate, employment and real estate business cases in state and federal courts and administrative forums. He is also a licensed California broker. In 2012 he received Gamma Sigma Alpha’s Professor of the Year Award. He is a co-author of Contemporary Real Estate Law, a real estate law textbook for undergraduate and graduate business schools scheduled for national release in 2013.

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

Cary Frydman is an economist who specializes in behavioral finance, neurofinance, and experimental economics. He studies investor behavior and choice under risk using a combination of data on brain activity, eye-movements, trading decisions and lottery choices. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award and currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Review of Finance. His work has been published in the leading finance 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.

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.

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

Gerard Hoberg's research interests include corporate finance, industrial organization, mergers, payout policy and corporate liquidity, and empirical asset pricing. His recent work in IPOs examines the role of prospectus disclosure and the role of the underwriter in resolving IPO prices and mitigating litigation exposure. His work on product markets examines the role of competition in industry booms, merger decisions, product innovation, payout policy and conservatism, and how industries form. Much of Hoberg's work also uses methods in computational linguistics to examine theories relating to corporate disclosures in Finance and Accounting. For example, the text-based approach provides new insights on industry classifications, innovation, financial constraints, and fraud. Prior to earning his doctorate, Hoberg worked as a vice president at a quantitative transaction optimization firm. His teaching interests include corporate finance and corporate restructuring.

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, 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 the American Economic Review and his current projects look at the ability of markets to aggregate information, both theoretically and experimentally. 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; Tilburg University MA

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's teaching and research specialties include corporate finance, portfolio management, and security valuation. Professor Ku is the instructor for the MBA and the Undergraduate Student Investment Fund classes. 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

PhD, UCLA; MBA, BS, Helsinki School of Economics

Juhani Linnainmaa does research on asset pricing, investments, and household finance. Linnainmaa was on the faculty of University of Chicago from 2006 to 2016, and he is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His recent publications include “Retail financial advice: Does one size fit all?” in Journal of Finance (2017) and “The history of the cross section of stock returns” in Review of Financial Studies (2017). He was awarded the CFA Society & Hillsdale Canadian Investment Research Award in 2015 and the Marshall E. Blume Prize in 2016.

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. He is the author of For the Many or the Few: The Initiative, Public Policy, and American Democracy. Professor Matsusaka provides commentary to 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.

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 forty 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. He is associate editor for the Journal of Financial Economics and Journal of Corporate Finance. From 2004 to 2007, he served as Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs at the Marshall School. Before joining USC, Professor Murphy was on the faculty of the University of Rochester and Harvard Business School.

Emily Nix’s interests include labor economics and applied microeconomics. Her current research focuses on child development and human capital formation. 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.

PhD, MIT; MS, Carnegie Mellon University; BS, Bogazici University

Oguzhan Ozbas studies corporate finance, corporate investment, internal capital allocation, organizational economics, and corporate governance. His research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and Review of Financial Studies, has been profiled in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, and cited in policy briefs for the U.S. Congress. His most recent research examines the tradeoffs involved in expanding shareholder rights. Prior to his doctoral studies, Professor Ozbas worked at the treasury department of Ford Motor Company. At Marshall, he teaches finance classes at the undergraduate, MBA, and PhD level.

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 is the author of several valuation case studies and contributed to Valuation: The Art and Science of Corporate Investment Decisions. Professor Plotts has been teaching corporate finance and financial analysis and valuation in the EMBA, GEMBA, MBA.PM, IBEAR, and undergraduate programs since 2002. She has received the Golden Apple Award for Teaching Excellence nine times and the Evan C. Thompson Teaching & Learning Innovation Award for Teaching (2011) and Mentoring (2012) and the Dean’s Award for Community (2010). Prior to joining the faculty at USC, Plotts worked within the investment-banking group of Banc of America Securities LLC, where she was involved in the execution of mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyout/recapitalization and capital raising via private/public offerings of equity and debt. She has consulted on shareholder value and corporate strategy 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 Journal of Monetary Economics. He is co-editor of Economic Inquiry, associate editor of the Review of Economic Dynamics, and a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research and 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.

PhD, MA UCLA; MA, BA Universidad de los Andes

Sandra Rozo’s interests include development economics and applied microeconomics. Her current research focuses on understanding the consequences of illegal behavior on economic development and how refugees affect hosting economies. Professor Rozo is also a research Fellow of the Provost Office, the Center for Social and Economic Research, and a Faculty member at the Schaeffer Center for Health Policy and Economics. Before receiving her PhD, she worked at the Inter-American Development Bank evaluating and designing development projects implemented in Latin America. Her research has been covered by the Huffington Post, National Public Radio (NPR), Economonitor, Drug Policy Alliance, El Tiempo (Colombia), and El Espectador (Colombia).

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 finance, real estate, and macroeconomics. Her work aims to integrate real estate into asset pricing both at the theoretical and the empirical front, and has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies.

PhD, Columbia University

Yongxiang Wang is a financial economist whose main work is about how corruption and politics affect resource allocation and efficiency. To this end, he has studied a range of prominent social, economic and political phenomena in China, including privatization, business groups, workplace safety, the death ceiling program, Sino-Japanese conflict, fellow selection at the China Academy of Science, air pollution, and the Sent-down Youth program during the Cultural Revolution. He has published in top economics, finance and strategy journals, including JPE, ReStud, AEJ: Applied, JLEO, RFS, JFE, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Management Science.

PhD, MS, London School of Economics; BA, Zhongshan University

Yanhui Wu is an economist whose research focuses on the political economy of mass media, the application of big data analysis in the social sciences, and the organization of knowledge-intensive activities. Prior to his doctoral study, Yanhui was a financial journalist in a leading Chinese newspaper. His research has published at top economics and management journals, including the American Economic Review, Review of Economics and Statistics, Economic Journal, Journal of Economic Perspectives, Management Science, and Organization Science.

PhD, Columbia University; BA, Comillas Pontifical University

Fernando Zapatero is a financial economist who studies problems in asset pricing and corporate finance, with an emphasis on mathematical and computational methods. His research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Mathematical Finance, and Management Science, and he coauthor of Introduction to the Economics and Mathematics of Financial Markets (MIT Press). He is an associate editor for Annals of Finance, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Mathematical Finance, and Mathematics and Financial Economics. Before joining USC, Professor Zapatero served on the faculty of the University of Texas, UC-Berkeley, and ITAM.