Business School hires new faculty in five fields

The business school welcomed five new faculty members in September. Jacquelyn S. Thomas, assistant professor of marketing, recently completed her doctorate in marketing at Northwestern University. Thomas is interested in how product pricing decisions affect the total economic value of a firm's customer base. She taught a new MBA elective course, Integrative Market Strategy, and cotaught the core course in marketing.
      Assistant Professor of Strategic Management Ezra W. Zuckerman Sivan completed his doctorate in sociology in 1994 at the University of Chicago. He studies how social interactions within markets and organizations affect economic outcomes. He cotaught the core course in strategic management and will teach the MBA elective Managing Organization Networks. Assistant Professor of Finance Harrison G. Hong completed his doctorate in economics at MIT. His research interests include asset returns and trading, derivatives markets, and information economics; he has explored how the availability of information to traders affects prices and volume in futures markets. Hong taught the MBA elective Derivative Securities as well as a doctoral course, Introduction to Financial Economics.
      John T. Jost, assistant professor of organizational be-havior, completed his doctorate in social psychology at Yale University in 1995, then worked as a research associate at the University of Maryland and a visiting professor of psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Jost studies social stereotyping and prejudice, intergroup relations, and political psychology. He taught a doctoral course in the social psychology of organizations and will teach the MBA core course Managing Through Mutual Agreement.
      Peter B. Henry, assistant professor of economics, who completed his doctorate in international finance and macroeconomics at MIT, will teach the MBA elective Reform and Growth in Emerging Markets and co-teach the core course Emerging Markets and the Global Economy spring quarter. Henry is interested in the interaction between equity markets and economic reform in developing economies and has served as a consultant to the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank and the Bank of Jamaica.

Congratulations are in order for Associate Professor of Finance Steven R. Grenadier and Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Economics Andrea Shepard. Both were awarded tenure effective last September. Grenadier, who joined the Business School faculty in 1992 immediately after receiving his PhD from Harvard, focuses his research on the study of real estate markets, to which he applies the tools of modern financial analysis, particularly option pricing analysis. Shepard, who earned her PhD at Yale before joining the Business School in 1991, is interested in competitive strategy, technological change, and the effects of firm organization on competitive advantage.

Shortly after wrapping up the final recommendations of the California Task Force on Health Care Reform, commission chair Alain C. Enthoven accepted the 1998 Ellwood Award recognizing his outstanding personal contributions to health care change. The award, given by the Foundation for Accountability, is named for Paul Ellwood, MD, another leading reformer of health care and founder of the Jackson Hole Group. Enthoven, the Marriner S. Eccles Professor of Public and Private Management, was selected for his vision, courage, impact, and long-term commitment to shaping and advancing accountability in health care. He is the first individual to receive the award. Four organizations were also honored at the Washington, D.C., ceremony in January.

Daniel Kessler, assistant professor of economics, law, and policy, received a grant from the American Cancer Society for a two-year study of the effects of legal reforms and medico-legal pressures on screening, treatment, costs, and health outcomes for four common cancers: lung, colorectal, breast, and prostate. The study will analyze state legal reforms concerning malpractice liability, living wills, and patient information about alternative cancer treatments. In January, Kessler and Mark McClellan of Stanford's economics department won the Kenneth J. Arrow Best Paper Award from the International Health Economics Association for "Do Doctors Practice Defensive Medicine?" published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Kessler and McClellan recently organized a health care conference cosponsored by the GSB and the Center for Economic Policy Research. The conference drew health care researchers from 15 countries to discuss the global role of technological change in health care and focused specifically on the incidence, treatment, and outcomes of heart attacks around the world.