ECGI Fellows Appointments
ECGI awards the honorific title of Fellow of ECGI to individuals who have demonstrated scientific excellence or other outstanding achievements in the area of corporate governance.
2024 Appointments
10 January 2024 - ECGI Appoints Eight New Fellows
ECGI today announces the appointment of eight new Fellows to add to its distinguished ranks. The new Fellows, who were drawn from academia in Europe and the United States, were elected by their peers, the existing Fellows of ECGI. The committee responsible for the process is currently chaired by Professor Julian Franks, Professor of Finance, London Business School.
The eight new appointees are: Alon Brav, Bratton Family Distinguished Professor, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University; Jill Fisch, Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Business Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School; Mariassunta Giannetti, Katarina Martinson Professor of Finance, Stockholm School of Economics; Wei Jiang, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Finance, Emory University's Goizueta Business School; Ulrike Malmendier, Professor of Economics and Finance, University of California, Berkeley; Curtis Milhaupt, William F. Baxter-Visa International Professor of Law, Stanford Law School; Holger Spamann, Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law, Harvard Law School; and Laura Starks, George Kozmetsky Centennial University Distinguished Chair, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin.
The Institute awards the title Fellow of ECGI to individuals who have demonstrated scientific excellence or other outstanding achievements in the area of corporate governance and stewardship. Previously appointed Fellows include Nobel Laureates Jean Tirole, Oliver Hart, Bengt Holmström, and Douglas Diamond. Collectively, the new appointees have published their research in the top academic journals worldwide and have consulted for government institutions, business and numerous other respected bodies while maintaining an impressive range of international credentials and appointments. Their work is commonly cited and has inspired new research in the field of corporate governance and stewardship.
Speaking about the new appointments, Professor Julian Franks, said:
ECGI has a tradition of recognising the top academics around the world for their work on corporate governance and stewardship. The award of Fellow of the Institute is a significant honour collectively bestowed by the most recognized and accomplished scholars in the field. This year’s appointees are long-deserving and representative of the best-in-class scholarship that ECGI is renowned for.
Click here to view the profiles of the newly appointed Fellows.
Click here to view all current ECGI Fellows.
Click here for more information about the ECGI Fellowship Committee.
About the newly appointed Fellows:
Professor Alon Brav, Bratton Family Distinguished Professor, Fuqua School of Business, Duke University
https://www.ecgi.global/users/alon-brav
Alon Brav is Professor of Finance at the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. Professor Brav obtained his Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His current research focuses on corporate governance, shareholder voting, and hedge fund activism. He has also studied the debate between rational and behavioral finance and the literature on limits to arbitrage activities. His research has featured in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Financial Analysts Journal, Review of Finance, Journal of Economic Methodology and Columbia Law Review. He was awarded the 1998 Smith Breeden Distinguished Paper Prize at the Journal of Finance; the 2003 Barclays Global Investors Michael Brennan Award for the best paper at the Review of financial studies; the 2005 Jensen Prize for the best corporate finance paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics; the 2016 Barclays Global Investors Michael Brennan Award for the best paper published at the Review of Financial studies; and the 2018 Jensen Prize for the best corporate finance and organizations paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics. Professor Brav is faculty research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), Corporate Finance Program and an associate editor at the Journal of Finance.
Professor Jill Fisch, Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Business Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School.
https://www.ecgi.global/users/jill-fisch
Jill E. Fisch is the Saul A. Fox Distinguished Professor of Business Law and co-director of the Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Her work focuses on the intersection of business and law including the role of regulation and litigation in addressing limitations in the disciplinary power of the capital markets. Her scholarship has appeared in the top law reviews including the Harvard Law Review, the Yale Law Journal, the Columbia Law Review, the Texas Law Review and the University of Pennsylvania Law Review. Her current research focuses on the role of institutional investors in corporate governance, particularly shareholder voting. Other projects include analysis of shareholder proposals, ESG disclosure, and the participation of retail investors in the capital markets. Professor Fisch is also conducting ongoing experimental research into retail investor decision-making. She holds a B.A. from Cornell University and a J.D. from Yale Law School.
Professor Mariassunta Giannetti, Katarina Martinson Professor of Finance, Stockholm School of Economics
https://www.ecgi.global/users/mariassunta-giannetti
Mariassunta Giannetti is the Katarina Martinson Professor of Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics, a CEPR research fellow, and a research associate of the ECGI. Professor Giannetti has broad research interests in corporate finance and governance, and financial intermediation and has published prize-winning research in leading journals in Finance, Economics, and Management. She currently serves as associate editor of the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and Economic Journal, among other journals, and was in the past in the editorial board of the Review of Financial Studies and the Review of Finance. She is also a frequent visitor and speaker at central banks around the world. Professor Giannetti holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and completed her B.A. and M.Sc. at Bocconi University (Italy).
Professor Wei Jiang, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Finance, Emory University's Goizueta Business School
https://www.ecgi.global/users/wei-jiang
Wei Jiang is Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Finance at Emory University's Goizueta Business School. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Program on Corporate Governance at Harvard Law School, a Research Associate of the NBER (Law and Economics, and Corporate Finance) and a member of the Committee on Capital Market Regulation. She is currently the President of the Society of Financial Studies (SFS).
Professor Jiang's main research interests lie in corporate governance, institutional investors, technology and financial markets. She has published extensively in top economics, finance, and law journals, and her research has been frequently featured in major media, including the Wall Street Journal, Economist, Institutional Investors, Money, Fortune, Business Week, New York Times and Financial Times. She received numerous awards for research excellence, including the Smith-Breeden and DFA Distinguished Paper Prizes from the Journal of Finance, the Michael J. Brennan Best Paper Award from the Review of Financial Studies, and the Jensen Prize from the Journal of Financial Economics, as well as the best paper prizes from the Western Finance Association, Chicago Quantitative Alliance, UK Inquire, the Q-Group, and the IRRC Institute. Previously she served as an editor of the Review of Financial Studies, a Finance Department Editor at Management Science and an Associate Editor at the Journal of Finance.
Professor Ulrike Malmendier, Professor of Economics and Finance, University of California, Berkeley
https://www.ecgi.global/users/ulrike-malmendier
Ulrike Malmendier received her PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University in 2002, and her PhD in Law (summa cum laude) from the University of Bonn in 2000. She joined Berkeley in 2006 as an Assistant Professor, after having been at Stanford as Assistant Professor of Finance since 2002. She also is a research associate at NBER (Corporate Finance and Labor Economics) and a faculty research fellow at IZA, a CESifo affiliate, and a CEPR research affiliate. She has been a Visiting Scholar at the Max-Planck Institute in Bonn, Visiting Fellow at Princeton University, and Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.Recently, she was named Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2010-2012), and she received several Citations of Excellence by Emerald for her research (2009, 2006).
Professor Curtis Milhaupt, William F. Baxter-Visa International Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
https://www.ecgi.global/users/curtis-j-milhaupt
Curtis J. Milhaupt is the William F. Baxter-Visa International Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and a Senior Member, by courtesy, of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. His research and teaching interests include comparative corporate governance, the legal systems of East Asia, and Chinese state capitalism. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, he has co-authored or edited seven books, including Regulating the Visible Hand? The Institutional Implications of Chinese State Capitalism (Oxford, 2016), Law and Capitalism: What Corporate Crises Reveal about Legal Systems and Economic Development Around the World (Chicago, 2008) and Transforming Corporate Governance in East Asia (Routledge, 2008). Prior to his Stanford appointment in 2018, Prof. Milhaupt held chaired professorships in comparative corporate law and Japanese law at Columbia Law School, where he served on the faculty for nearly two decades.
Professor Holger Spamann, Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law, Harvard Law School
https://www.ecgi.global/users/holger-spamann
Holger Spamann is the Lawrence R. Grove Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches corporate law, corporate finance, and a course on private funds. His research focuses on the law and economics of corporate governance and financial markets, judicial behavior, and comparative law. Before embarking on his academic career, he practiced M&A law with Debevoise & Plimpton in New York and clerked for two years in Europe. He holds law degrees from France, Germany, and the U.S., and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.
Professor Laura Starks, George Kozmetsky Centennial University Distinguished Chair, McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin.
https://www.ecgi.global/users/laura-starks
Laura T. Starks, Ph.D., is the George Kozmetsky Centennial Distinguished University Chair at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on sustainable finance issues, including climate finance and corporate governance; institutional investor issues, including shareholder activism; and household finance issues including long-term return expectations. She has won a number of research awards. She was an Editor at the Review of Financial Studies and is currently a Research Associate of the NBER, a Research Member for the ECGI, and a Senior Fellow for ABFER. She has served as President of the AFA, SFS, WFA and FMA.
2019 Appointments
18 October 2019 - ECGI Appoints Five New Fellows
ECGI is proud to announce the appointment of five new Fellows to add to its distinguished ranks. The new Fellows, who were drawn from academia in Europe and the United States, were elected by their peers, the existing Fellows of ECGI. The committee responsible for the process is currently chaired by Professor Julian Franks, Professor of Finance, London Business School.
The five new appointees are: Philippe Aghion, Professor of Economics, London School of Economics and College de France; Marianne Bertrand, Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor Of Economics, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Katharina Pistor, Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law, Columbia Law School; Edward Rock, Martin Lipton Professor of Law, NYU Law; Paola Sapienza, Professor of Finance Kellogg School of Management.
The Institute awards the title Fellow of ECGI to individuals who have demonstrated scientific excellence or other outstanding achievements in the area of corporate governance. Previously appointed Fellows include Nobel Laureates Jean Tirole, Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström. Collectively, the new appointees have published their research in the top academic journals worldwide and have consulted for government institutions and numerous respected bodies while maintaining an impressive range of international credentials and appointments. Their work is commonly cited and has inspired new research in the field of corporate governance.
Speaking about the new appointments, Professor Julian Franks, said
ECGI has a long tradition of recognising the top academics around the world for their work on corporate governance. The award of Fellow of the Institute is a significant honour which is made more valuable for being bestowed by the ranks of those already recognised for their achievements.
Click here to view the profiles of the newly appointed Fellows.
Click here to view all current ECGI Fellows.
Click here for more information about the ECGI Fellowship Committee.
About the newly appointed Fellows:
Professor Philippe Aghion, Professor of Economics, London School of Economics and College de France
https://ecgi.global/users/philippe-aghion
Philippe Aghion is a Professor at the College de France and at the London School of Economics, and a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His research focuses on the economics of growth. With Peter Howitt, he pioneered the so-called Schumpeterian Growth paradigm which was subsequently used to analyze the design of growth policies and the role of the state in the growth process. Much of this work is summarized in their joint books Endogenous Growth Theory (MIT Press, 1998) and The Economics of Growth (MIT Press, 2009), in his book with Rachel Griffith on Competition and Growth (MIT Press, 2006), and in his survey “What Do We Learn from Schumpeterian Growth Theory” (joint with U. Akcigit and P. Howitt.) In 2001, Philippe Aghion received the Yrjo Jahnsson Award of the best European economist under age 45, and in 2009 he received the John Von Neumann Award.
Professor Marianne Bertrand, Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor Of Economics, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
https://ecgi.global/users/marianne-bertrand
Marianne Bertrand is the Chris P. Dialynas Distinguished Service Professor of Economics the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is a Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the Center for Economic Policy Research, and the Institute for the Study of Labor. Professor Bertrand is an applied micro-economist whose research covers the fields of labor economics, corporate finance, and development economics. Her research in these areas has been published widely, including numerous research articles in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the American Economic Review, and the Journal of Finance.
Professor Katharina Pistor, Michael I. Sovern Professor of Law, Columbia Law School
https://ecgi.global/users/katharina-pistor
Katharina Pistor is the Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law at Columbia Law School and director of the Law School’s Center on Global Legal Transformation. Her research and teaching spans corporate law, corporate governance, money and finance, property rights, comparative law and law and development. She has published widely in legal and interdisciplinary journals and is the author can co-author of several books. She is the recipient of the Max Planck Research Award (2012) and of several grants by, among others the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and the National Science Foundation. Her most recent book is “The Code of Capital: How the Law Creates Wealth and Inequality” (Princeton University Press, 2019).
Professor Edward Rock, Martin Lipton Professor of Law, NYU Law
https://ecgi.global/users/edward-rock
Edward Rock’s main areas of teaching and research are corporate law and corporate governance. He has written about the role of institutional investors and hedge funds in corporate governance, poison pills, politics and corporate law, corporate voting, proxy access, corporate federalism, and mergers and acquisitions, among other things. In addition to teaching and research, Rock is the director of NYU Law School’s Institute for Corporate Governance & Finance. He is also the Reporter for the American Law Institute’s Restatement of the Law, Corporate Governance, which was launched in January 2019. He spent the first part of his teaching career at the University of Pennsylvania where he served as Co-Director of the Institute for Law and Economics (1998-2010), as Associate Dean (2006-08), and as Senior Advisor to the President and Provost and Director of Open Course Initiatives (2012-15). He was a visiting professor at NYU in fall 2011 and has also visited at Columbia, and Hebrew University, where he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar.
Professor Paola Sapienza, Professor of Finance Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
https://ecgi.global/users/paola-sapienza
Paola Sapienza is the Donald C. Clark/HSBC Chair in Consumer Finance Professor at the Kellogg School of Management. She is a Trustee of the European Corporate Governance Research Foundation (ECGRF) and she also serves as a faculty research fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research's program on corporate finance and political economy and the Center for Economic Policy Research. Prof. Sapienza's areas of expertise include cultural economics, banking and financial institutions, corporate governance and corporate finance. Her work has been published in such journals as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and Science. She has been featured in the Thompson Reuter/Clarivate list of most influential researchers in 2014-2018. Prof. Sapienza was a director of the American Finance Association between 2011 and 2013 and a board member of the Academic Female Finance Committee (AFFECT) of the American Finance Association between 2015 and 2019.
2017 Appointments
07 November 2017 - ECGI Appoints Five New Fellows
ECGI is proud to announce the appointment of five new Fellows to add to its distinguished ranks. The new Fellows, who were drawn from academia in Europe, North America and Australia, were elected by their peers, the existing Fellows of ECGI. The committee responsible for the process is currently chaired by Professor Steven Kaplan, Neubauer Family Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.
The five new appointees are: Professor Renee Adams, Professor of Finance, Commonwealth Bank Chair in Finance, Australian School of Business, University of New South Wales; Professor John Coates, John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics, Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School; Professor Francesca Cornelli, Professor of Finance and Director of Private Equity, London Business School; Professor Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance and Academic Director of Centre for Corporate Governance, London Business School; and Professor Eilis Ferran, Professor of Company and Securities Law, University of Cambridge Law Faculty and Centre for Corporate and Commercial Law.
The Institute awards the title Fellow of ECGI to individuals who have demonstrated scientific excellence or other outstanding achievements in the area of corporate governance. Previously appointed Fellows include Nobel Laureates Jean Tirole, Oliver Hart and Bengt Holmström. Collectively, the new appointees have published their research in the top academic journals worldwide and have consulted for government institutions and numerous respected bodies while maintaining an impressive range of international credentials and appointments. Their work is commonly cited and has inspired new research in the field of corporate governance.
Speaking about the new appointments, Professor Steven Kaplan, said:
“ECGI has a long tradition of recognising the top academics around the world for their work on corporate governance. The award of Fellow of the Institute is a significant honour which is made more valuable for being bestowed by the ranks of those already recognised for their achievements.”
Click here to view the profiles of the newly appointed Fellows.
Click here to view all current ECGI Fellows.
About the newly appointed Fellows:
Professor Renee Adams, Professor of Finance, Commonwealth Bank Chair in Finance, UNSW Business School, University of New South Wales
http://ecgi.global/users/renee-adams
Professor Adams’ research focuses on the organization of corporate boards. Her research examines the information flow between managers and the board, governance problems in banks, group decision-making, the governance of central banks and gender diversity on boards. She has published in top accounting, economics, finance and management journals. She is a senior fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research and a member of FIRN. She is currently a finance department editor at Management Science and sits on the SFS council. Professor Adams’ interest in gender diversity is not limited to research. She co-founded AFFECT, the American Finance Association’s “Academic Female Finance Committee”, in 2015, and currently chairs it.
Professor John Coates, John F. Cogan, Jr. Professor of Law and Economics, Harvard Law School, Harvard Business School, Research Director, Center on the Legal Profession
http://ecgi.global/users/john-coates
John Coates teaches corporate governance, M&A, finance, and related topics at Harvard Business School and Harvard Law School. He is a Fellow of the American College of Governance Counsel. He has testified before Congress and provided consulting services to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Department of Treasury, the New York Stock Exchange, and participants in the financial markets, including hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity funds. He served as independent consultant for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and is currently the Chair of the Investor-as-Owner Subcommittee of the Investor Advisory Committee of the SEC. His research focuses on Financial Institutions, Legal Professions, Corporate Law: Mergers and Acquisitions, and Securities Regulation.
Professor Francesca Cornelli, Professor of Finance and Director of Private Equity, London Business School
http://ecgi.global/users/francesca-cornelli
Professor Cornelli’s research interests include corporate governance, private equity, privatization, bankruptcy, IPOs and innovation policy. She has published several papers in the major finance and economics journals and she gives regular talks in major conferences and Universities. She is an editor of the Review of Financial Studies, and has been an associate editor of the Journal of Finance, of the Journal of Financial Intermediation and of the Review of Economic Studies. She is a Research Fellow of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), an ECGI (European Corporate Governance Institute) Research Member and a director of the Society of Financial Intermediation.
Professor Alex Edmans, Professor of Finance and Academic Director of Centre for Corporate Governance, London Business School
http://ecgi.global/users/alex-edmans
Professor Edmans’ research interests are in corporate governance, executive compensation, M&A, corporate social responsibility, and behavioural finance. He is Managing Editor of the Review of Finance and has published in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, and Journal of Economic Literature. He was awarded the Moskowitz Prize for Socially Responsible Investing and was named a Rising Star of Corporate Governance by Yale University and a Rising Star of Finance by NYU/Fordham/RPI. Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos and the World Bank Distinguished Speaker Series, testified in the UK Parliament, and given TEDx talks on The Social Responsibility of Business and From Post-Truth to Pro-Truth.
Professor Eilis Ferran, Professor of Company and Securities Law, University of Cambridge
http://ecgi.global/users/eilis-ferran
Professor Ferran has written extensively on UK, EU and international financial regulation, company law and corporate finance law. Her publications include Brexit and Financial Services (Hart Publishing, 2017 (forthcoming) co-authored), The Oxford Handbook of Financial Regulation (OUP, 2015, co-edited) Principles of Corporate Finance Law (OUP, 2104, co-authored) and The Regulatory Aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis (CUP 2012, co-authored). She has advised UK Parliamentary committees and served as an academic member of Stakeholder Group of the European Banking Authority. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and an Honorary Bencher of Middle Temple.
2014 Appointments
2012 Appointments
2010 Appointments
2008 Appointments
2005 Appointments
2003 Appointments
2002 Appointments - Inaugural Fellows