Marcin Kacperczyk

Assistant Professor of Finance

Can any good be had by investing in “sinful” companies? In his co-authored paper, recently accepted for publication at the Journal of Financial Economics, Marcin Kacperczyk shows that investors gain 2 ½ percent higher returns every year (on a risk-adjusted basis) by investing in “sin” stocks – publicly traded companies involved in producing alcohol, tobacco, and gaming – as opposed to investing in stocks of comparable characteristics such as beverage, food, and entertainment companies, respectively. 

By studying the performance of “sin” stocks, Professor Kacperczyk found that these stocks are held less by norm-constrained institutions, such as pension plans, as compared to mutual or hedge funds that are natural arbitrageurs, and that these stocks receive less coverage from analysts than do stocks with otherwise comparable characteristics. Given that sin stocks are neglected by norm-constrained investors and face greater litigation risk heightened by social norms, they have higher expected returns than otherwise comparable stocks. “This paper asks, ‘Are social norms important for economics outcomes?’” explained Professor Kacperczyk.  “And the findings show that indeed social norms affect markets, including investment decisions, stock prices, and returns.”

Professor Kacperczyk’s research interests focus on institutional investors, empirical asset pricing, socially responsible investing, and behavioral finance. His work has been published in leading academic journals, and two of his papers have been nominated for the Smith Breeden Prize.

After serving as an assistant professor of finance at the University of British Columbia, Professor Kacperczyk joined Stern in September 2008.

He earned a PhD in finance from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and an MA in banking and finance from the Warsaw School of Economics, Poland. He teaches Foundations of Finance for MBA students.

Stanley Zin

William R. Berkley Professor of Economics and Business

New to NYU Stern this fall is economist Stanley Zin, who is perhaps best known for the “Epstein-Zin Utility Function,” which has gained wide acceptance as a basic tool of dynamic decision models. Along with his co-author Larry Epstein, Professor Zin was awarded the prestigious Frisch Medal from the Econometric Society for this contribution.

Professor Zin comes to Stern from Carnegie Mellon University David A. Tepper School of Business where he was the Richard M. Cyert and Morris H. DeGroot Professor of Economics and Statistics and a faculty member since 1988. 

He studies decision theory, dynamic asset valuation, macroeconomics, and econometrics. “Events of the last two years have convinced us that although the world may be flat, it isn't necessarily smooth,” said Professor Zin. “The recent financial crisis challenges economists to find a deeper understanding of the links between financial markets and the global economy, and the role played by government institutions. The economics and finance faculty at Stern have taken a leadership role in this area and it is very exciting to join the team at this particular point in economic history.” 

Professor Zin’s broad teaching portfolio has spanned a wide variety of graduate, undergraduate and executive programs, and covers topics such as macroeconomics, probability and statistics, econometrics, corporate finance, financial economics, investments, options, and fixed-income valuation. At Stern, he teaches Statistics for Business Control and Regression and Forecasting Models in the undergraduate program, and The Global Economy in the Langone Part-time MBA Program.

Professor Zin received a PhD in economics from the University of Toronto, a MA in economics from Wayne State University in Detroit, and a BA in economics from the University of Windsor in Ontario. He serves as a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and as a consultant for the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Matt Statler

Richman Family Director of Business Ethics and Social Impact Programming

Clinical Assistant Professor of Management and Organization 

NYU Stern welcomes Matt Statler as the Richman Family Director to lead and coordinate business ethics and social impact programming for the School’s Undergraduate College. The position is new and, Statler says, “creates a central point of contact for a variety of activities already underway at Stern,” including the four-course Social Impact Core Curriculum as well as a range of co-curricular programs such as the Social Impact Stipend Awards, the International Service Trip Program, and Stern’s participation in NYU’s Catherine B. Reynolds Foundation Program in Social Entrepreneurship.

“The Social Impact Core Curriculum differentiates Stern from its peer schools,” said Statler. This year he will be teaching two of its four courses: Business and Its Publics and Professional Responsibility and Leadership. He plans to bring to the curriculum an “emphasis on playful, embodied learning”, in which students practice decision-making in difficult situations through simulations and role playing in class, as well as through service learning and volunteering in the community. 

Statler comes to Stern from NYU’s Center for Catastrophe Preparedness and Response (CCPR), where he was the Director of Research and responsible for coordinating the Center’s research activities, while conducting his own research on crisis and disaster management. For the previous three years, he served as the Associate Director of NYU’s International Center for Enterprise Preparedness (InterCEP), where he managed special projects focused on how businesses can become more strategically prepared for disasters and other crises.

Before joining NYU, Statler was Director of Research at the Imagination Lab, a nonprofit Swiss foundation where he studied play-based learning for managers. Prior to that, he worked as a management consultant.

Statler’s organizational research has appeared in a number of academic journals and edited volumes, including the Oxford Handbook of Organizational Decision Making (Oxford University Press, 2008). His most recent book is Everyday Strategic Preparedness: The Role of Practical Wisdom in Organizations (Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2007).

Statler received his PhD in philosophy from Vanderbilt University and a dual bachelor of arts in philosophy and Spanish literature from the University of Missouri, Columbia.

Paul Wachtel

Professor of Economics

The weakened US economy has prompted critics to charge that the dollar should be replaced as the global reserve currency.  A global reserve currency is the currency denomination for significant quantities of government assets, and also the currency widely used in pricing  globally traded products.

Paul Wachtel, NYU Stern Professor of Economics believes that while the world will not dump its dollar assets because of the potential instability it would cause, he foresees the Euro as sharing this role with the dollar.  “In its 10 years of existence, the Euro has proved itself as a reliable and stable currency.  The US and the Eurozone are the world's two largest economic areas, each with a population of a little more than 300 million, although US GDP is 60 percent larger,” he explained.  “Central banks and governments around the world will slowly diversify, and reserve holdings will include both dollar and Euro denominated assets.”

Wachtel argues that criticism of the dollar as the reserve currency, which has come from China, Russia, India and France, among others, is a result of the US’s position in the world’s financial troubles.  “The world is looking for someone or something to blame—and it is convenient to pin the blame on the largest world economy.  There is no other major reserve asset because, until now, no other economy has been as trustworthy, stable and dynamic as the US.  With all our shortcomings, there are no serious competitors yet.  And no government or world body can simply legislate that the dollar should not have a reserve role,” Professor Wachtel said.   However, he added, it’s a fine balance because, “The dollar’s role as a global reserve asset helps the US because it keeps borrowing costs down and makes financing deficits relatively easy, but we need to avoid taking advantage of this role.  If we borrow too much and begin to lose our reputation as the world's most secure and dynamic economy, then dollar assets will be less attractive to the whole world, impacting the reserve role of the dollar and, ultimately, US growth and prosperity.”

Paul Wachtel has been at NYU Stern for more than 30 years and teaches courses in monetary policy, banking and central banking and global macroeconomics.

Roy C. Smith

Kenneth Langone Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance

In a recent Forbes.com opinion piece, Professor Roy Smith explained his point of view on the Obama administration’s financial reform measures, the largest set of such reforms since the Great Depression.  There are a great many parts to the proposed new regulations, but by far the most important part, he said, is installing safeguards to prevent the financial system from crumbling again because of accumulated systemic risk.  “We cannot continue to have a financial system that generates bubbles and then bursts them every few years with dire consequences to the real economy.  Preventing a systemic failure of the banking and shadow banking systems requires identifying banks or other large complex financial firms that are ‘too big to fail’ and providing incentives that force them to change their ways,” Professor Smith said.  “By reducing a firm’s size and risk appetite, and managing systemic risk, the global financial system will be strengthened and protected from another meltdown.” 

Professor Smith adds, however, that the problem lies in the extent of regulatory powers granted to control the banks, and the willingness of regulators to use that power.  When everything seems to be going well, and banks can demonstrate that their ratios are in compliance, then no one wants a regulator to tell them to slow down.  “Even now,” Professor Smith pointed out, “short memories, rising markets and the concentration of lobbying power by the banks can wear down the best of legislative and regulatory intentions.  The danger is that we will not get a new regulatory apparatus that is very different from the one that we have now, one that failed to prevent banking failures in the mid-80s and again today.  But we need to try, and the administration’s initiative is headed in the right direction.”

Professor Smith has been at NYU Stern since September 1987.  Prior to assuming this appointment, he was a General Partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co., which he joined in 1966, specializing in international investment banking and corporate finance.  Upon his retirement from the firm to join the Stern faculty, he was the Senior International Partner.  During his career at Goldman Sachs, he served as President of Goldman Sachs International Corp., working out of the firm's London office in the 1980s.

Priya Raghubir

Professor of Marketing and Mary C. Jacoby Faculty Fellow

Retailers, especially cosmetic and fragrance companies, frequently offer free gifts to promote the sale of their products. But is this approach always effective? In her new study “Factors Moderating Free Gift Offers: Does the Size of the Gift Matter?”,  forthcoming in a special issue of the Journal of Business Research, NYU Stern marketing professor Priya Raghubir (PhD ’94) assesses how the visual size of free gifts in an ad affects the sales of the products being marketed. She found that when the gifts are displayed larger than the products in an ad, consumers believe the quality of the product is poor and are less likely to purchase it, while smaller visual sizes of gifts versus products lead to higher purchase intentions. Professor Raghubir explained, "Large gifts backfire – they have large, unintended consequences. Retailers and managers need to know this in order to successfully promote their products."   

Professor Raghubir’s research focuses on consumer psychology, psychological aspects of prices and money, risk perceptions and visual information processing. She has published more than 40 articles in top academic journals and serves on the editorial boards of six journals.

An alumna of NYU Stern, Professor Raghubir joined Stern’s faculty in July 2008 after teaching at University of California at Berkeley Haas School of Business and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.

Sam Hui

Assistant Professor of Marketing

How can companies find and target their best customers? In a new study, "A Model for Gamers’ Revenue in Casinos," NYU Stern Assistant Professor Sam Hui and his co-authors develop a mathematical model to identify the most lucrative customers for casinos. Professor Hui explained, "Our research helps casino managers pinpoint the most likely gambler and who’s likely to lose the most so they can then more effectively market to these gamers. But most firms, specifically cell phone companies and hotels, could also benefit from this model of customer relationship management." Professor Hui said that their model integrates the gamers’ frequency of casino visits, their total wagers, and their distribution of those bets at table games versus slot machines. He said they also can determine if revenue from specific players was derived from skill or luck.

Professor Hui’s research focuses on the intersection between marketing and statistics, the entertainment industry, Internet retailing and Bayesian models. His research has been awarded a number of honors including the 2008 John Howard Dissertation Award, second prize for the 2008 George B. Dantzig Dissertation Award, the 2007 AMA EXPLOR Award and the 2007 Levy and Weitz Retailing Dissertation Proposal Award.  

Professor Hui joined NYU Stern in July 2008 after graduating with a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He teaches a course on marketing research.

Philipp Schnabl

Assistant Professor of Finance

How should the government respond to the crisis in the banking sector? In a new research paper, "Efficient Recapitalization," NYU Stern Assistant Professor Philipp Schnabl and his colleague NYU Stern Assistant Professor Thomas Philippon, analyze whether and how the government can restart bank lending. Professor Schnabl explained, "Banks do not lend because they are highly levered and hold toxic assets that may not redeem their value. It is difficult for the government to recapitalize banks in this environment because banks know more about the toxic assets on their balance sheets and the government is rightly worried to overpay. We show that the most cost-effective way to restart lending is to buy equity stakes in banks rather than to purchase toxic assets directly." Professor Schnabl said that equity stakes give the government a part of future profits and ensures that the government does not purchase the least-valuable assets from the private sector.

Based on his research, Professor Schnabl has been interviewed by a number of media including BBC, CNN and NPR. He is also a co-author, with his Stern colleagues, of the recently released book, "Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System," that offers an analysis of and long-term solutions to the financial crisis.

Professor Schnabl joined NYU Stern in August 2008 after graduating with a PhD from Harvard University. His main research interests are financial intermediation and corporate finance and his most recent work examines the causes of financial crises.

Rohit Deo

Professor of Statistics and Operations Research
Robert Miller Faculty Fellow

Rohit Deo, NYU Stern Professor of Statistics and Operations Research and Robert Miller Faculty Fellow, was voted "Professor of the Year" by the 2009 graduating MBA class. Professor Deo will be recognized by the entire MBA graduating class at the Graduate Convocation Ceremony to be held at Radio City Music Hall on Thursday, May 14, 2009. The Professor of the Year is chosen for his/her dedication to outstanding teaching, commitment to students and the embodiment of the Stern community.

Professor Deo joined NYU Stern in 1995 and teaches MBA and undergraduate courses in data analysis and forecasting time series. His primary research areas include econometric models, financial data modeling, forecasting, stochastic volatility and time series analysis.

Professor Deo's recent research focuses on developing methods for carrying out reliable inference when only a limited amount of data on a highly dependent time series is available. Using the principles of curvature and invariance, Professor Deo has shown that appropriate likelihoods can yield simple and elegant solutions to problems that applied researchers in finance and economics commonly face in such situations. One application of his methodology is that of predictive regressions in finance, where researchers are interested in testing whether or not returns on assets are related to lagged values of predictor variables such as dividend-price ratios.

Professor Deo is an Associate Editor of the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the flagship journal of the American Statistical Association. He was ranked amongst the top 100 theoretical econometricians worldwide in 2007.

Dolly Chugh

Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations

As the economy suffers, many people may be more focused on their losses than their gains, creating a loss-framed mindset in managers, investors and consumers. Dolly Chugh, Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations, in her new research paper with co-author Mary C. Kern from Baruch College, reveals that people who are trying to avoid a loss are more likely to stretch ethical boundaries than people who are trying to attain a gain.

"When making decisions, individuals often choose from an array of possible responses, with some choices being more, or less, ethical than others. We reasoned that individuals who perceive a potential outcome as a loss will go to greater lengths, and engage in more unethical behavior, to avert that loss than will individuals who perceive a similarly sized gain," said Professor Chugh. "The current economic recession has certainly brought potential losses to the forefront of many people's minds, and this is the mindset that can lead to the 'ethical framing effect.' Importantly, even people not affected directly by the recession are prone to this effect, as the underlying reality is the same between the gain frame and the loss frame; only the perception of that reality differs."

The authors also found that people in a loss-framed mindset who were under time pressure are more likely to be less ethical. The paper, "Bounded Ethicality: The Perils of Loss Framing," will be published in the March 2009 issue of Psychological Science.

Professor Chugh is currently researching the role of a "stereotype tax", which is the cost borne by the holder of a stereotype in decision-making. This research was included in Harvard Business Review and on a recent Entrepreneur.com blog.

Dolly Chugh joined New York University Stern School of Business as an Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations in July 2006. Prior to pursuing an academic career, Professor Chugh worked in both professional services and line manager roles at Morgan Stanley, Sibson & Company, Time Inc., Scholastic Inc. and Merrill Lynch.

Anindya Ghose

Assistant Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences

"There is definitely economic value in online user-generated content, and there are concrete ways for firms to monetize that content through online advertising," says Professor Anindya Ghose, whose latest research on the topic recently won him two grants in the competitive Marketing Science Institute-Wharton Interactive Media Initiative (MSI-WIMI) User-Generated Content Competition and another grant from the NYU-Poly Seed Fund Competition.

In several research papers he has written over the last five years, Ghose has been studying three interrelated questions: (1) Is there economic value in the content that users generate online through social media tools like product reviews, reputation systems and blogs? (2) If there is economic value, can firms actively monetize it through newer forms of online advertising, such as search engine advertising? (3) What are the drivers of consumer behavior and firm performance in search engine advertising?

Both of his MSI-WIMI-honored proposals seek to address question one. One proposal examines how cell phone users generate multi-media online content, and how their behavior is associated with their geographic mobility and the behavior of their social network neighbors. His other MSI-WIMI proposal builds on his previous co-authored research with Professor Panagiotis Ipeirotis conducted in the context of product reviews and seeks to develop a hotel ranking system for Travelocity that accounts for users' multi-dimensional preferences during a search — for example, a beachfront hotel in Miami that allows pets, has a jazz bar and an in-house Thai restaurant.

Ghose's NYU-Poly-prized work, "The Economics of Use-Generated Content in Online Social Media," with Professor Vasant Dhar and Keith Ross at NYU-Poly, explores question number two, specifically, the value of keywords generated by users in online reviews and blogs to search engine advertisers on Google and Microsoft.

His latest research on question three finds that advertisers ranked in the middle — not the top — in search engine sites are the most profitable. Furthermore, when search engines list advertisers in organic listings, they have a positive effect on advertisers' performance in paid listings.

Ghose joined NYU Stern in 2004 and teaches courses on electronic commerce and information technology in business and society. Much of his research is sponsored by an NSF CAREER award and several competitive grants from Microsoft and other corporations.

Tom Meyvis

Associate Professor of Marketing

As Hollywood studios compete in the sweeps season, producers are asking what they can do to capture and hold the attention of TV watchers across the country. According to recent research by Professor Tom Meyvis, commercial breaks can actually make TV programs more enjoyable for viewers.

In his forthcoming paper in the Journal of Consumer Research, "Enhancing the Television Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions," with Stern PhD student Jeff Galak and Leif Nelson of University of California-San Diego, Meyvis found that viewers rated their enjoyment of a TV show higher when the show was interrupted by commercials. These same viewers said they strongly preferred to avoid ads, which is consistent with their general intuition that commercials ruin the experience. Though these findings seem contradictory, he and his co-authors found that when people take a break from watching a TV show — by sitting through a few commercials — the interruption can refresh the novelty of the program.

Through a series of six studies, the researchers demonstrate that short commercial interruptions tend to increase viewers' enjoyment of the show and make them willing to pay more for a DVD of the show. They say people often adapt to the experience of watching television, so each successive minute is slightly less satisfying than the previous one. Ads disrupt this adaptation process and increase the overall pleasure of the experience. These findings hold true regardless of the quality of the commercials and across a variety of video programs — sitcoms, nature documentaries, short animated clips and Bollywood music videos. But, Meyvis notes, "Any interruption — not just commercials — can enhance the viewing experience."

This study is an extension of another paper by Meyvis and Nelson, which was published in the Journal of Marketing Research and found that, although people avoid breaks in pleasant experiences while seeking them in unpleasant experiences, interruptions actually make pleasant experiences more enjoyable and unpleasant experiences more irritating.

Meyvis' research interests include branding, consumer decision-making and consumer information processing. He joined NYU Stern in 2001 and teaches courses on consumer behavior and the design and analysis of experiments.

Viral Acharya

Professor of Finance

"A lot of opinions are being expressed on how to fix the financial crisis. It is best not to fix each symptom but to go after the root causes in a principled manner—take a big picture view, identify the critical flaws and fix those," said Viral Acharya, Professor of Finance at NYU Stern and London Business School. "This is what we set out to achieve with the book, Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System"

With co-author Professor Matt Richardson, Professor Acharya compiled and edited a series of 18 White Papers by 33 Stern faculty, the culmination of a series of symposia convened by Dean Thomas Cooley and Vice Dean Ingo Walter to take an objective look at the causes of the crisis and to present solutions to repairing the financial markets from a variety of perspectives. "In the book, we offer a comprehensive and pragmatic approach to repairing the financial system for the long run. We aim to influence the policy debate and the policymakers to restore financial stability."

As an outgrowth of the faculty's collective effort, a five-part class on the financial crisis is being offered to MBA students, and on March 6, NYU Stern will host a launch event to discuss the ideas in the book. Panelists including Paul Volcker and Myron Scholes, Charles Plosser and Eric Dinallo, Stern faculty and others will discuss proposals for the role of government and regulation in reforming the regulation of the financial sector.

"This book is among the few collaborative attempts to bring the collective wisdom of a large number of experts to bear on issues of paramount importance to economies world over," explained Professor Acharya. "The book is receiving rave reviews and is already part of the policy debate. Our ideas are being covered in the media, and we are arranging talks in many central banks and for other relevant audiences in academic and practitioner circles. A number of book chapters are backed by rigorous academic papers that will come out in top journals over the next few years. Hence, I see the book as an authoritative and comprehensive document on causes and remedies of the financial crisis of 2007-2009 for a long time to come. It will influence policy in future in ways that perhaps even we did not fully envision."

Watch Professor Viral Acharya on Bloomberg News 
About Professor Viral Acharya

Thomas Philippon

Assistant Professor of Finance
Charles Schaefer Family Fellow

Assistant Professor of Finance Thomas Philippon, in joint research with Ariell Reshef (GSAS '08) from the University of Virginia, studied pay in finance over the last century, comparing the industry's pay levels with the private sector, adjusting for education, skills, age and gender of the workers. The authors find that the difference in pay between finance and the rest of industry was slight, if any, except in boom periods—the late 1920s to 1930 and from the mid-1990s to 2006.

"We looked at human capital in the finance sector and found that wages increased during periods of deregulation, presumably due to the abundance of creativity and innovation that deregulation promotes, resulting in stronger demand for skilled workers," Philippon explained. "Finance skills are also in demand as a result of non-financial activities such as IPOs and credit risk.

"We also find, however, that rents, defined as the difference between what a factor of production is currently paid and what it should be paid to remain in its current use, account for 30 percent to 50 percent of the wage differentials observed since the late 1990s. In that sense, financiers are overpaid."

Professor Philippon's research has been cited in the media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, the International Herald Tribune and The Economist. His research interests include macroeconomics, corporate finance, business cycles, corporate governance, earnings management and unemployment.

Read Professor Philippon's Stern on Finance blog entry about this research.

Xavier Gabaix

Associate Professor of Finance

Xavier Gabaix, Associate Professor of Finance, has been named to The Economist's list of best young economists in the world, joining a previous list that includes Nobel laureate Paul Krugman and "Freakonomics" author Steven Levitt.

The publication cites Gabaix's work in, and beyond, behavioral economics. He has researched the prevalence of hidden fees in economic life (e.g. how banks charge surprise fees) and studies "power laws," statistical patterns that can reveal what can and cannot explain the size and growth of things like cities and company size. In his well-publicized research, Gabaix found that executive compensation, deemed excessive by many commentators, could be explained by the rise in company size rather than "greed."

He was recently awarded, with a colleague, a $402,342 grant from the National Science Foundation to study rare disasters and exchange rates. The project proposes a new model of exchange rates, which combines the possibility of rare economic disasters and an asset view of the exchange rate.

Professor Gabaix's research interests focus on asset pricing, executive pay, the causes and consequences of seemingly irrational behavior, the origins power laws in economics and macroeconomics. His research has been published in many journals including the Journal of Finance, American Economic Review, Quarterly Journal of Economics and Nature.

Robert Salomon

Associate Professor of Management and Organizations

In his co-authored paper recently recognized by the International Association of Business and Society as the best published paper of 2006, Professor Robert Salomon finds that investors do not necessarily sacrifice returns when selecting into socially responsible investment (SRI) vehicles and that companies should think carefully about their socially responsible practices since certain types of practices are associated with higher returns.

Published in the Strategic Management Journal in 2006, the paper, "Beyond Dichotomy: The Curvilinear Relationship between Social Responsibility and Financial Performance," challenges conventional wisdom that socially responsible practices are costly for firms and therefore decrease profitability. It demonstrates that there are instances in which socially responsible activities can, in fact, be profitable for firms.

"Up until now, most research on socially responsible investing compared SRI mutual funds to non-SRI mutual funds to see which group performs better," explains Salomon. "Our approach recognizes that within SRI funds there's a tremendous variance in style, strategy and approach that is likely to have an impact on performance."

SRI funds generally screen their holdings based on how well firms' corporate practices meet various social criteria. With respect to financial performance, Salomon explains, "Our findings suggest that SRI funds are better off screening their portfolio to the full extent, or not at all." Employing the maximum number of screens insures that high quality firms are selected into the portfolio, while selecting few (or no) screens allows for better portfolio diversification.

In addition to his interests in corporate social responsibility, Salomon studies issues related to corporate strategy and international expansion. His research examines foreign entry and location decisions, cross-border knowledge transfer, international trade and globalization. His most recently published paper — in Management Science, July 2008 — finds that it takes firms three months longer to get international semiconductor plants up and running, which costs firms $65 million more on average than similar domestic plants. In addition to publishing a number of articles in leading academic journals, he is the author of the book, Learning from Exporting: New Insights, New Perspectives.

A graduate of NYU Stern, Salomon (MPhil '00, PhD '02) joined Stern's faculty in 2005 from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. He teaches the MBA courses Corporate Strategy and Multinational Business Management.

Susan Douglas

Paganelli-Bull Professor of Marketing and International Business

As one of the earliest researchers to start working in international marketing in the 1970s, Professor Susan Douglas was recently awarded the Global Marketing Award from the American Marketing Association (AMA) Marketing SIG group this year for her "lifelong dedication to global marketing" and "significant contributions to global marketing knowledge." Professor Douglas adds this award to an impressive roster of honors that she has received, including the prestigious Jours de France Gold Medal for Advertising Research, as well as the Hans Thorelli Prize and S. Tamer Cavusgil Award, which she has been given three times.

Professor Douglas researches global marketing strategy, cross-cultural consumer behavior and international marketing research. Her work specifically focuses on the competitive and spatial dimensions of global marketing and branding strategy, the changing dynamics of cultural influences and the implications for marketing and the methodological aspects of the research.

The co-author (with Professor of Marketing Samuel Craig) of the books Global Marketing Strategy and International Marketing Research, Professor Douglas has published more than 50 articles in professional journals. Her most recent publication was "Consumer Worldmindedness, Social Responsibility and the Impact on Store Choice," which was published in the fall issue of the Journal of Marketing.

Professor Douglas has a number of research projects underway. Her paper "Culture's Impact on Americanization" is forthcoming in the International Marketing Review. And her article "Empowering Consumers in Emerging Markets" is under review. Most recently, in her paper "Building Buying Potential among Rural Low Income Consumers in Emerging Markets," she and Professor Craig have been examining the unique challenges firms face as they enter emerging markets and attempt to reach low-income consumers in rural areas.

Professor Douglas has been at NYU Stern since 1978. In addition to teaching the course International Marketing Management to Stern undergraduate students, she serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of International Marketing and the Journal of International Business Studies, where she is a consulting editor. She is a fellow of the European Marketing Academy and Academy of International Business.

Stephen Ryan

Professor of Accounting
Peat Marwick Faculty Fellow

With bad subprime loans affecting all aspects of the financial markets, Accounting Professor Stephen Ryan examines how these loans are hitting the balance sheets. In his paper, "Accounting in and for the Subprime Crisis," he explains how the subprime crisis and the credit crunch have stressed financial reporting and also addresses the critical aspects of mark-to-market accounting that have made it difficult for firms to it apply to subprime mortgages and other positions. Professor Ryan also examines the issues that have arisen regarding sale accounting for subprime mortgage securitizations and the consolidation of securitization entities.

"While I am an advocate of fair market accounting, especially for financial institutions, it has both conceptual and practical limitations. However, I believe that fair value accounting provides more useful information to investors than the alternatives, and the FASB improvement of FAS 157's guidance regarding fair value measurement to better cope with illiquid or otherwise disorderly markets is possible," he said. Professor Ryan wrote a related paper for the Council for Institutional Investors on this topic entitled, "Fair Value Accounting: Understanding the Issues Raised by the Credit Crunch."

Professor Ryan is actively involved in financial accounting standards setting. He currently serves on the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Liabilities and Equity Resource and Financial Institutions Advisory groups. Until 2003, he was a member of the Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council, the advisory body for the Financial Accounting Standards Board. He has previously chaired the American Accounting Association's Financial Accounting Standards and Financial Reporting Issues Conference committees. Professor Ryan has served as the editor of the Review of Accounting Studies since 2006.

Jill Kickul

Clinical Professor of Management and Organizations
Director of the Stewart Satter Program in Social Entrepreneurship at the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies

“With a greater demand for transparency and accountability across the board, especially given the current economic times and conditions, it has become important that social entrepreneurs show our value and impact on our communities we serve,” said Professor Jill Kickul in opening remarks at NYU Stern’s Berkley Center for Entrepreneurial Studies’ 5th Annual Conference of Social Entrepreneurs entitled, “Measuring Social Impact,” on November 7.

The conference, organized by Professor Kickul and the Berkley Center team, brought together more than 200 entrepreneurs, investors, scholars, educators and thought leaders in social entrepreneurship to discuss new and innovative strategies for measuring social impact in a meaningful way. “Despite noteworthy advancements in the field, Professor Kickul explained, “gathering impact data remains quite challenging and costly for social ventures to collect and share.” At the conference, attendees presented the latest practices in assessing social impact, shared lessons in outcome measurement and explored how to leverage existing resources, tools and other metric innovations for tomorrow.

Nationally recognized for developing one of the top innovative programs in entrepreneurship education for her curriculum at the Simmons School of Management, Professor Kickul was recently awarded a $1 million grant from The Stavanger Centre for Innovation Research at Norway’s University of Stavanger to study how high-tech firms in Scandinavia take innovations to the market. The grant will also support publications, workshops and government reports developed to present the research results.

The co-author of the textbook Entrepreneurship Strategy: Changing Patterns in New Venture Creation, Growth and Reinvention, Professor Kickul teaches Foundations of Social Entrepreneurship in the Langone Part-time MBA program and Foundations of Entrepreneurship in the full-time MBA program. In 2009, she is publishing a “Handbook of Microcredit in Europe: Social Inclusion through Microenterprise Development,” which examines the national contexts and performance of microcredit initiatives within the European Union and how these strategies and polices may affect a particular country’s entrepreneurial behavior.

Professor Kickul also has two papers forthcoming: “Intuition versus Analysis?: Testing Differential Models of Cognitive Style on Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy and Intentionality” in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, which offers a an approach to understanding how individuals evaluate entrepreneurial opportunities; and “Organizational Dynamic Capability and Innovation: An Empirical Examination of Internet Firms” in the Journal of Small Business Management, which explores the different roles played by a firm’s inventory of resources (endowment of resources and capabilities) and its integrative capabilities (ability to recognize opportunities as well as to configure and deploy the resources) in the process of firm innovation.

With more than 50 publications in entrepreneurship and management journals, Professor Kickul primarily studies social entrepreneurship, innovation and strategic processes within new ventures and micro-financing practices and wealth creation in transitioning economies. She joined NYU Stern in July 2008 from Miami University, Ohio.

Lasse H. Pedersen

Professor of Finance

How do we solve the current liquidity crisis and reduce the risk of future ones? In October, Professor Lasse H. Pedersen was asked to answer these very questions in presentations for the International Monetary Fund and the Federal Reserve Board. His answer: (1) recapitalize banks by raising new capital, diluting old equity, and possibly reducing the face value of old debt; (2) improve funding markets and trust by broadening bank guarantees and opening the discount window; (3) manage risk by acknowledging the systemic risk due to liquidity spirals and establish policies that consider the whole system, as opposed to each institution in isolation; and (4) promote trade through clearing houses to allow for netting out, reduce counterparty co-dependencies, and increase transparency. He cautioned against taxes on stock transactions, "because they actually reduce liquidity and increase firms’ cost of capital." And he argued, "A ban on shortselling is a bad idea because shortsellers bring new information to the market, increase liquidity, and reduce bubbles, and, more importantly, a ban does not solve the general funding problem."

Professor Pedersen’s presentations were based on his research on liquidity risk, including a study that was featured in The Economist in August. The study provides a model that links an asset's market liquidity — the ease with which it is traded ’ and traders' funding liquidity — the ease with which they can obtain funding. The model explains why market liquidity can suddenly dry up, has commonality across securities, is related to volatility, and co-moves with the market. This paper was accepted for publication in The Review of Financial Studies shortly before the current crisis broke out. Professor Pedersen also recently posted a blog entry about liquidity risk and the current crisis.

Professor Pedersen joined NYU Stern in 2001 and is currently on sabbatical conducting research, including his recent working paper on value and momentum investing that was featured in The New York Times in September. He is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research affiliate at the Centre for Economic Policy Research, an associate editor at the Journal of Finance and Journal of Economic Theory, and is developing trading strategies at AQR Capital Management.

Stephen Figlewski

Professor of Finance

With all that has been going on in the markets over the past few weeks, Finance Professor Stephen Figlewski argues that the financial system is breaking down because of the large losses from mortgage defaults, and extreme uncertainty about how many more are to come. The risk is arising in the real economy and is being pumped through the financial system. "The financial system needs to be disconnected from this risk that is too big for it to handle. The bailout plans so far are designed to address the symptoms of the financial crisis on Wall Street, but not its root cause, which is the housing crisis on Main Street," he says. How does he propose separating the financial markets from this risk? "The Federal government can take over bearing the risk itself, just by guaranteeing that all mortgage payments will be made to the lender as scheduled. This would stabilize the markets because all mortgage-backed securities, no matter how complicated, would become as safe as Treasury bonds."

Professor Figlewski adds that the government should then work with homeowners to restructure their monthly payments so they can afford to stay in their homes. For example, even without changing the mortgage interest rate, restructuring could lower a homeowner's monthly payment substantially over the short run, while still paying off the full principal over the life of the loan.

Professor Figlewski's proposal could be as much as 10 times more cost efficient than Republican presidential candidate John McCain's plan. He explains, "McCain suggests that the government should buy up the bad mortgage loans, so for a $200,000 mortgage at 7 percent, he would pay the lender $200,000. With my approach, the government would just be guaranteeing the mortgage payments of about $1,300 per month."

Professor Figlewski has been a member of the NYU Stern faculty since 1976. He is the director of the NASDAQ OMX Derivatives Research Project and his primary research interests include derivatives, risk management and financial markets. He teaches courses in Futures and Options at the undergraduate, MBA and PhD levels.

Gina Dokko

Assistant Professor of Management and Organizations

Hiring experienced workers may come with hidden costs. Assistant Professor Gina Dokko, with two colleagues, says that experienced hires bring with them useful knowledge and skills, but they can also bring habits and thinking that conflict with the new employer's norms and values.

By exploring the work history of more than 1300 workers and applicants, Dokko and her research team found that prior related experience can leave a worker with cognitive and behavioral 'baggage' that can interfere with their performance at their next employer. "We learned that assumptions about what constitutes good performance are not easy to let go of when moving to another firm," said Dokko. "We also learned that adaptable workers and those who fit the culture were less likely to carry harmful baggage."

So should firms prefer inexperienced workers? "Inexperienced workers don't carry baggage, but they don't carry much job knowledge and skill, either," she said. Instead, hiring managers and HR offices can use these findings to develop training and socialization strategies that help new employees unlearn old habits, in addition to learning the new culture, in order to maximize their performance.

Professor Dokko joined NYU Stern in 2004. Her research focuses on the consequences of job mobility for individuals and organizations, including its effects on innovation, learning, performance and social capital.

Prasanna Tambe

Assistant Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences

According to research by Professor Prasanna Tambe and a colleague at Wharton, at least 8 percent of IT workers have been displaced at some point in their careers by offshore outsourcing, as many as twice the rate of workers in all other occupations. The study, conducted along with CareerBuilder.com, is based on data collected from about 10,000 workers, making it perhaps the largest survey of its kind. "This is one of the first surveys to focus on offshoring-related job loss by occupation," said Tambe. "By looking at the impact of offshore outsourcing on IT jobs, we may be able to project how this trend will unfold in other industries."

The survey results also show: IT workers in positions that require face-to-face contact are less likely to be moved offshore, demonstrating the value of interpersonal skills in the industry; of all respondents, older workers were more susceptible to displacement than younger workers; 28 percent of employers who offshored jobs said offshoring has already enabled them to create new, better jobs of different types in the US; and 64 percent of employer respondents said they offshored to save costs, with nearly half saying they save about $20,000 per person by doing so.

For more information on this research, click here.

Professor Tambe joined NYU Stern as Assistant Professor of Information, Operations and Management Sciences from the Wharton School in fall 2008. Tambe's research centers on how IT-related organizational change affects labor markets and human resource management.