Two Finance Scholars Join Haas Faculty

Two professors, both recognized by the Journal of Finance for their insightful research, have joined the Haas Finance Group as permanent faculty members.

Professor Annette Vissing-Jørgensen, formerly a professor at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management, and Assistant Professor Adair Morse, formerly an associate professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, have both been visiting faculty members at Haas since July 2012.

“We are just delighted to have such a terrific pair of new faculty members coming to Haas. Both Annette and Adair are superlative scholars and great teachers; we couldn't be happier to have them joining us at Cal,” says Andrew Rose, associate dean for academic affairs and chair of the faculty.

Vissing-Jørgensen is the Arno A. Rayner Chair in Finance and Management. Her research focuses on empirical asset pricing and household finance (particularly stock market participation and more recently, the special role played by Treasuries), private equity and entrepreneurship, and disclosure regulation. Her work has been published in leading finance and economics journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, and Quarterly Journal of Economics. She won the Journal of Finance Brattle Prize (Distinguished Paper) in 2005 for the paper, "Testing Agency Theory With Entrepreneur Effort and Wealth." 

In addition, Vissing-Jørgensen has won several teaching awards at Kellogg, is an associate editor of the Journal of Finance, and is a director for both the American Finance Association and the European Finance Association. She taught the Haas School’s Introduction to Finance class in fall 2012. She earned her PhD from the economics department at MIT.

"I'm very excited to be joining Haas and hope to contribute to making the MBA experience here even better, both in terms of new teaching initiatives and by bringing recent research into the classroom," Vissing-Jørgensen says. "We have to make sure that we don’t just talk a lot about the importance of innovation but exemplify this in our own teaching."

Morse’s research focuses on a wide range of topics from entrepreneurship and household finance to asset management and corporate governance. "I try to use my research energy to put information in the public realm that levels the playing field," says Morse. "For example, my work on tax evasion in Greece has had a material impact on the debates in Greek Parliament and how the people see solutions to the terrible recession they are going through."

Morse’s paper on how disclosing information about fees on payday loans affects borrowing decisions earned her the prestigious first place Brattle Prize from the Journal of Finance. Implications from her work on corporate fraud appear in the Dodd Frank Act. The Haas Executive Committee honored Morse with a Schwabacher Fellowship, the highest honor that the Haas School bestows upon assistant professors. Morse received her PhD in finance from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.