Baruch I. Lev

Biography

Baruch Lev is the Philip Bardes Professor (Emeritus) of Accounting and Finance, at New York University Stern School of Business. He was formerly a Professor of Accounting and Finance at the University of Chicago, Tel Aviv University (where he served as Dean of the business school), and the University of California, Berkeley (where he was also a professor at the Law School).

Baruch Lev is a CPA and worked for 6 years in public accounting, he served on boards and directors, and was a partner in a consulting firm - The Law and Economics Consulting Group. Lev was engaged in numerous consulting projects for major international companies, and served on governmental committees. He also testified before the U.S. Senate and Congress. In His extensive research work, comprised of seven book and 125 research studies which were published in the top academic journals (see Lev's CV), and were cited almost 65,000 times by other researchers (according to Google Scholar), Baruch Lev often challenges existing rules, regulations, and widely-accepted public beliefs. For example, based on empirical evidence (facts) he showed that the accounting treatment of intangible investments seriously detracts from the usefulness to investors of corporate financial reports, and not income, in particular; that most (70-75%) of mergers and acquisitions fail, that ESG isn't a useful guide for investors, and that machine learning and AI often beat executives and investors in financial analysis and predicting economic events. Going against the orthodoxy grain with evidence, is a hallmark of Baruch Lev's academic work. See his CV for details.

Research Interests

• Corporate financial analysis and valuations
• Earnings Measurement and Management
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Machine Learning and AI
• Intangibles

Courses Taught

• Accounting/Finance
• Financial Analysis
• Investor Relations
• Mergers and Acquisitions
• Ph.D. Seminars in Finance and Accounting

Selected Publications

Lev, B. and F. Gu (2024)
The M&A Failure Trap: Why So Many Mergers and Acquisitions Fail, and How the Few Succeed,
Wiley, November 2024

Demers, Hendrikse, Jous and Lev (2022)
ESG Didn't Immunize Stocks Against Covid-19 Market Crash
Harvard Law School Form on Corporate Governance, September.

Lev, B and Srivastava (2022)
Explaining the recent failure of Value Investing
Critical Finance Review

Xi, Cho, Dou, and Lev (2022)
Predicting Future Earnings Changes Using Machine Learning
Journal of Accounting Research, 60, 467-515

Demers, Hendrikse, Jous and Lev (2022)
The False Promise of ESG
Harvard Law School Form of Corporate Governance, March.

Chen, J., E. Demers, and B. Lev (2018)
Oh What a Beautiful Morning! Diurnal Influences on Executives and Analysts: Evidence from Conference Calls
Management Science, 2018, 64, 5899-5924

Baruch Lev (2018)
Time to Change the Accounting for Intangibles Status Quo
European Accounting Review, 28, 713-726

Baruch Lev (2018)
The Deteriorating Usefulness of Financial Report Information and How to Reverse It
Accounting and Business Research, 48, 465-493

Gu, F. and B. Lev (2017)
Time to Change Your Investment Model
Financial Analysts Journal, 73, Fourth Quarter 2017, 23-33.