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Three Faculty Honored for Inspiring Students

Business School students acknowledged the teaching efforts of, from left, Garth Saloner, Bill Barnett, and Robert Flanagan. Photo by Saul Bromberger/Sandra Hoover Photography.Professors Garth Saloner, Bill Barnett, and Robert Flanagan (at right, l to r) were honored May 27 by Business School students, who presented them with 2008 distinguished teacher awards.

Saloner, who headed the committee that created the new MBA curriculum, is also codirector of the School's Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. He has accompanied students on trips to countries including South Africa and Ghana, as part of their academic experience, and was honored by MBA students who said he "demonstrated an uncanny command of the classroom: tough, rigorous, serious, attentive, and fun." Saloner is the Jeffrey S. Skoll Professor of Electronic Commerce, Strategic Management, and Economics.

Barnett, recipient of the PhD Distinguished Service Award, was cited by doctoral students whom he advises for being engaged with his students and supporting their work. The Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Business Leadership, Strategy, and Organizations, Barnett is director of the Center for Global Business and the Economy and director or codirector of three executive education programs.

Flanagan, who this year taught the Sloan Master's course in economics, is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of International Labor Economics and Policy Analysis, Emeritus. In presenting him with the Sloan Distinguished Teaching Award, students cited his leadership ability in the classroom.

More than 40 faculty members were nominated for one of the three awards recognizing not only outstanding work in the classroom but also in advising and working with students in related settings. "We are blessed with such great faculty at our School, and I applaud the student groups for recognizing excellence in teaching," said Dean Robert Joss.

In nominating Saloner, one student noted: "He holds us to a very high standard. Not a minute of teaching time is wasted. Outside the classroom he is involved in lunches, study trips, dinners with students. He genuinely cares for students."

"This is an extraordinary student body dedicated to the improvement of management," Saloner told students at an outdoor awards ceremony. "You challenge the frameworks we teach, inspiring us to expand the boundaries. I taught the Endeavor case for the first time this year, and after the discussion I sat down and rewrote the teaching plan."

Saloner, who also received the MBA teaching award in 1993, earned his PhD from the Business School in 1982 and credited his thesis advisor John Roberts and faculty members Robert Burgelman and Irving Grousbeck with influencing his teaching and writing. Barnett, who earned his PhD at UC Berkeley in 1988, thanked GSB Professor Glenn Carroll, who was his thesis advisor.

Doctoral student Nick Switanek, one of Barnett's advisees, said Barnett "always knew how to meet me where I was and to help me grow." Doctoral student Elizabeth Pontikes credited Barnett with leading her to be an ethical researcher, and to "focus on what the data's showing" rather than what might be expected.

In the Sloan classroom, Flanagan faced some students with zero background in economics while others had degrees in the subject. "Everyone benefited and improved their level of knowledge," said Libby Brown, Sloan '08. Another member of the class, Sarath Boyapati, said Flanagan transformed individuals' thinking by using "logic, rationale, and theories and their applications."

School Adds 13 Tenure-Track Faculty

It is the year of financial analysis in the Business School corridors, thanks to the addition of five faculty in the field of finance. Other newcomers to the tenure-line faculty ranks include a senior professor in organizational behavior, and junior professors in accounting, economics, marketing, political economy, and operations, information, and technology.

Sarah A. SouleSarah A. Soule, now professor of organizational behavior, was most recently professor of sociology at Cornell, where she also earned her doctorate. Her research examines state and organizational-level policy change and diffusion, and the role social movements play in these processes. Current projects include analyses of the effects of advocacy groups on environmental legislation in the United States and how protests affect decisions of corporations invested in Myanmar and stock prices of firms targeted by protesters.

Jonathan B. BerkJonathan B. Berk (at right), the A.P. Giannini Professor of Finance, comes from UC-Berkeley's Haas School of Business, where he was the Sylvan Coleman Professor of Finance. His interests include corporate valuation, capital structure, mutual funds, asset pricing, experimental economics, and labor economics. He is coauthor of a new introductory finance book for graduate students, coauthored with Peter DeMarzo, the GSB's Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance. Berk, originally from South Africa, was exposed to finance at Goldman Sachs before earning a doctorate from Yale.

Besides Berk, other additions to the finance faculty include:

Ian Martin, an assistant professor who conducts research on financial markets and the macroeconomy. He has investigated theoretical models of asset-price co-movement; the implications of disasters on financial markets; asset returns in the long run; the behavior of small assets; long interest rates; and the impact of borrowing constraints in equilibrium. A former Goldman Sachs trader in London, he received a doctorate in economics from Harvard.

Francisco Peréz-González, an assistant professor whose research intersects corporate finance and organizational economics. Recently he examined the importance of top managerial talent for firm performance in family-controlled firms. A former staff economist for the Mexican government, he holds a doctorate in economics from Harvard and was most recently on the faculty of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, Austin.

Jules H. van Binsbergen, an assistant professor whose research focuses on consumption-based asset pricing, return predictability, and quantitative portfolio management. Recently, he has looked at goods-specific habit formation for asset prices and the interaction among cash flow, growth predictability, and stock return predictability. He received a doctorate in finance from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke and is also a jazz musician who studied at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague, Netherlands.

Bilge Yilmaz, an associate professor whose research is in corporate finance, political economy, game theory, and market microstructure. He has written on the inefficiency of tender offers, optimal security design, corporate bankruptcy, strategic trading, and predatory lending. He holds a doctorate in economics from Princeton and was most recently on the faculty of the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Three junior faculty members have joined the political economy faculty as assistant professors:

Saumitra Jha, who earned a doctorate in economics at Stanford, researches institutions, political development, and economic growth. He has studied democratic responsiveness and leadership in Delhi's slums, and he has shown that Muslim and Hindu merchants cooperated cordially for centuries when trading in the ports of India. He has a courtesy appointment to the Stanford political science faculty.

Claire S.H. Lim focuses on how political institutions structure the selection of public officials and their electoral incentives. She uses differences among the U.S. states and dynamic econometric models to analyze how politicians' ideologies interact with their policy choices. Lim, originally from Korea, received her PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Neil Malhotra studies political psychology, politics, and survey methods. He has written on responsibility attribution following government failure, the relationship between legislative institutions and public finance, optimal methods for designing and analyzing surveys, and publication bias in the social sciences. Recently he has studied the influence of risk perceptions on voting behavior in presidential primaries and leadership selection in the U.S. Congress. He received his doctorate from Stanford's Department of Political Science, where he also holds a courtesy faculty appointment.

Other new faculty members follow:

Renee Bowen, assistant professor of economics, applies game theoretic models to the behavior of individuals who are constrained by institutions and who have long-term strategic considerations. Recently she examined characteristics of democratic political institutions that compromise. After working in investment banking at J.P. Morgan Securities and consulting for the World Bank, she earned a doctorate in economics from Georgetown University.

Maria Ogneva, assistant professor of accounting and, by courtesy, of economics, studies the role of financial reporting in capital market efficiency. She examines the economic consequences of poor financial reporting and also has explored whether capital markets are efficient in the processing of accounting information. She received a doctorate in accounting from the University of Southern California after study at Lomonosov Moscow State University.

Monic Sun, assistant professor of marketing, seeks to understand how sellers strategically disclose product information to consumers. For example, she has looked at how a product's quality and positioning jointly determine a firm's incentive to offer free samples. She is interested in dynamic quality adjustments, product line design, and internet marketing. She received her PhD in economics from Boston University after study at Peking University, China.

Robert Swinney, assistant professor of operations, information, and technology, studies supply chain management issues with multiple parties in cooperative or competitive situations. Most recently, he looked at the effects of strategic consumer purchasing behavior on operational decision making in fashion, retailing, and manufacturing. He has also studied the interface of finance and operations. His doctorate in operations management is from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School.