AUGUST 2006
Faculty News
Honors Conferred on Baron
Photo by Rob Stevens
David P. Baron, whose work has shaped the academic fields of political economics, nonmarket forces, and today addresses self-regulation by corporations outside of the institutions of government, has been awarded an honorary doctorate from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium. Baron, the David S. and Ann M. Barlow Professor of Political Economy and Strategy, was honored at a ceremony in the gothic halls of the university, where he received the doctoral decoration from Rector Marc Vervenne. Baron began his research into the effects of traditional governmental regulation on business during his year as a visiting professor at Leuven, presenting his ideas to doctoral students there well before this material became the world standard.
School Names Five to Endowed Positions
Endowed chairs for four professors and a lecturer in leadership were
announced at a faculty dinner in March. Sociologist Hayagreeva Rao and
accounting professor David Larcker, both of whom joined the School’s faculty
in the autumn of 2005, received chairs. David Bradford, a longtime senior
lecturer, was named to the newly endowed term lectureship in leadership, and
professors Mary Barth and Darrell Duffie were honored with chairs recently
vacated by faculty members William Beaver and George Parker. Beaver and
Parker will remain involved in the School as emeriti.
The Eugene D. O’Kelly III Lectureship in Leadership honors the late 1977
alumnus who was CEO and chairman of KPMG America until he died in 2005 of a
brain tumor. (See story on page XX about his book.) O’Kelly “exemplified the
leadership qualities that the GSB and Stanford values—talented executive,
outstanding volunteer, love of Stanford and the Business School,” said
Dean
Robert Joss in announcing the endowment, which will fund salary and course
and case development in support of a non-tenure-line faculty member.
Bradford, who joined the faculty in 1969, began teaching High-Performance
Leadership, the first GSB course with the word leadership in its title, two
decades ago, Joss said. Besides his popular teaching, Bradford has authored
23 articles and 6 books, and served on editorial advisory boards and as a
consultant to boards and organizations.
Rao became the Atholl McBean Professor of Organizational Behavior and Human
Resources, a chair created in 1976 to honor McBean, the chair of Gladding
McBean and Co., the original maker of Franciscan pottery, and one of the
contributors to the initial funding of the Business School. Rao studies the
processes and determinants of organizational change, especially how cultural
and social forces affect the creation, transformation, and dissolution of
social structures. For example, he studied how social activists created
Consumers’ Union from an existing consumer research group.
Barth, who had occupied the McBean chair, now is the Joan E. Horngren
Professor of Accounting. It is the only chair endowed by a current member of
the faculty, Charles Horngren, who retired in 1995 and requested the chair
be named for his wife. It had previously been held by Beaver. Barth’s
research deals with “financial reporting issues of great importance to
practitioners and regulators,” Joss said. Her research is not just
U.S.-focused, and Barth is a member of the International Accounting
Standards Board.
Larcker was named the James Irvin Miller Professor of Accounting. The author
of more than 50 articles in managerial accounting, including the subfields
of corporate governance and compensation, he is “widely considered a leading
if not the leading scholar in management accounting in the world,” Joss
said. [see story on Larcker] The Miller professorship was endowed
in 1954 by a Stanford-trained engineer who became South American manager of
United Press International.
Duffie, who previously occupied the Miller chair, became the Dean Witter
Distinguished Professor in Finance, a chair that had been occupied by
Parker. The Witter chair was created in 1958 to honor Dean Witter, the
founder of an investment banking firm that opened in San Francisco in 1924,
the year before the Business School. Duffie’s research on credit risk,
derivatives, and financial risk management has had a major impact on
research and management practices, Joss said. Duffie has authored more than
60 papers and 4 books and consulted with the U.S. Treasury, the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Department
of Justice.
University Funds Multidisciplinary Team Studying Peace, Security Issues
Romain Wacziarg, associate professor of economics in political economy, is
one of the first recipients of a grant from Stanford’s new $3 million
Presidential Fund for Innovation in International Studies. Along with
political scientist James Fearon, he will receive more than $177,000 over
three years to assess the impact of ethnic, linguistic, and religious
diversity on economic growth, trade and capital flows, governance,
development of democracy, and political stability.
Wacziarg recently was appointed a faculty affiliate of the Centre for
Economic Policy Research in London.
The new fund is the first program launched by Stanford’s International
Initiative, which seeks to encourage collaborative, cross-disciplinary
approaches to the global challenges of pursuing peace and security,
improving governance, and advancing human well-being, said Coit Blacker,
director of the Freeman-Spogli Institute for International Studies. A
committee chose eight multi-year projects that bring together faculty from
fields that traditionally do not collaborate to produce new courses,
symposia, conferences, and research papers.
Stanford President John Hennessy said such projects are important because
“the world does not come to us as neat disciplinary problems, but as complex
interdisciplinary challenges. The collaborative proposals we have selected
for this first round of funding offer great potential to help shed light on
some of the most persistent and pressing political issues on the global
agenda today.”
Economist Paul Milgrom elected to National Academy of Sciences
Paul Milgrom, PhD ’79, an expert in the study of auctions and pricing
strategies, was elected in April to the National Academy of Sciences, one of
the highest honors that can be accorded a U.S. scientist or engineer in
recognition of achievements in original research.
A professor in the Stanford Department of Economics with a courtesy
appointment at the Business School, Milgrom began his research with his
doctoral dissertation written under the supervision of Business School
Professor Emeritus Robert Wilson. Subsequently, Milgrom and Wilson
collaborated to design the Federal Communications Commission spectrum
auction, which has since been copied and adapted for dozens of auctions in
electricity markets and other industries involving more than $100 billion
worldwide. Auctions are examples of market processes used to allocate
resources, and the study of these is fundamental to understanding when and
how markets work well.
Milgrom also has made seminal contributions to auction theory. Two papers
coauthored in 1982 with Robert J. Weber, a professor at the Kellogg School
of Management at Northwestern University, have been the bases for successful
initial empirical tests of auction theory that have since led to more
theorizing and testing by other economists.
