UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY'S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS – Following an extensive search for top faculty talent, UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business successfully recruited three tenured professors from some of the east coast’s finest business schools this year. Management and entrepreneurship professor Toby E. Stuart from Harvard Business School is the new faculty director of Haas' Lester Center for Entrepreneurship. Professor Ross Levine from Brown University, ranked one of the ten most cited finance experts from 2001-2011 by Research Papers in Economics (RePEc), has joined the Haas Finance Group. Associate finance professor Gustavo Manso, previously at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, arrived at Berkeley-Haas this spring and has already earned a teaching award from his full-time Berkeley MBA students.
“We continue to hire at the very top of the faculty market. It is a part of what’s making us stronger and stronger. Great faculty attracts great students and great staff – a virtuous circle, and we are in it,” says Haas Dean Rich Lyons.
Toby E. Stuart
Professor Toby E. Stuart has been named faculty director of the Haas School’s Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and holds the Leo Helzel Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He is also a member of the Management of Organizations (MORS) group. Stuart had been a visiting professor at Haas since fall 2010 and the acting faculty director of the Lester Center since July 2011. During that time, he taught Entrepreneurship and Advanced Comparative Strategy at the MBA level, and Research in Macro-Organizational Behavior at the Ph.D. level.
“Dr. Stuart is an award winning and extensively published scholar as well as one of our highest rated teachers. He brings incredible depth and breadth to the entrepreneurship program here at Haas,” says Andre Marquis, Lester Center executive director.
Prof. Stuart says one of his goals at Haas is to develop the curriculum’s aim to teach all students to think like an entrepreneur regardless of their field of study. “Even if they don’t plan to launch a startup company, students can learn how to use innovation to strengthen organizations in any field,” says Stuart.
Stuart’s research is focused on social networks, venture capital networks, and the role of networks in the creation of new firms. His work is published in Administrative Science Quarterly, American Journal of Sociology, Science, Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change, and many others.
He is the recipient of the 2007 Kauffman Prize Medal for Distinguished Research in Entrepreneurship, granted every other year to recognize an individual’s contributions to entrepreneurship research. Stuart also received the Administrative Science Quarterly’s Scholarly Contribution (best paper) award.
In 1995, Prof. Stuart earned his Ph.D. from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He received his A.B., summa cum laude, in economics from Carleton College in 1989
Ross Levine
Professor Ross Levine is the Willis H. Booth Chair in Banking and Finance, and a member of the Economic Analysis and Policy (EAP) group at Haas. Coming from Brown University’s economics department, Prof. Levine says he accepted his Haas offer because he was impressed with the school’s emphasis on excellence – in teaching, in mentoring students to reach their potential, and in conducting relevant, influential research.
“I found the environment at Haas energizing and wanted to be a part of this outstanding institution, to contribute to its goals, and to benefit from the people at this marvelous institution. I feel very fortunate to be here,” says Levine.
Levine is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a Senior Fellow at the Milken Institute.
His primary research focuses on how financial sector regulations and the operation of financial systems affect economic growth and poverty, economic stability, and the distribution of income and economic opportunities. His work on international finance includes the causes and consequences of firms raising money in different countries, international monetary arrangements (such as the Eurozone), and international finance and aid agencies (such as the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, etc.). In addition, Levine studies the “returns to entrepreneurship” –comparing earnings of entrepreneurs and comparable salaried professionals –as well as the characteristics of successful entrepreneurs. He has published over 100 hundred articles. His just-released book, Guardians of Finance: Making Regulators Work for Us, with James Barth and Gerard Caprio critiques the role of U.S. and international regulators in causing global financial crises and proposes strategies for improving their performance.
Prof. Levine received his Ph.D. in economics from UCLA in 1987, after graduating Phi Beta Kappa in economics from Cornell University in 1982.
Gustavo Manso
Haas Finance Group Associate Professor Gustavo Manso arrived at Haas in January 2012 and after one semester was honored by his MBA students with the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching for his corporate finance class. Prof. Manso previously taught for five years at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
In 2010, Manso was awarded the Swiss Finance Institute’s Outstanding Paper Award. He was also honored with the Review of Financial Studies Young Researcher Award in 2009. He is the co-founder (with Itay Goldstein) of the Finance Theory Group, an organization to foster theoretical research in the areas of corporate finance, financial institutions, and financial markets.
Prof. Manso studies corporate finance, financial institutions, financial markets, and entrepreneurship. His work has been published in the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Econometrica, and American Economic Review Papers and Proceedings.
“Gustavo is on the very frontier in his area of research. Recently, he has been studying how institutions and financial incentives affect innovation,” says Brett Green, Haas assistant professor of finance. “His research shows that a combination of tolerance for early failure and reward for long-term success is effective in motivating both creativity and innovation.”
In 2006, Prof. Manso earned his Ph.D. in Finance from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He earned his M.S. in Mathematics from the Instituto de Matemática Pura e Aplicada (IMPA), Brazil, in 2001 and his B.A. in Economics from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUCRio), Brazil, in 1999. From 1997 to 1998, Manso was an exchange student at UC Berkeley.