The Late Professor Michael C Jensen

Michael C. Jensen, Jesse Isidor Straus Professor of Business
Administration, Emeritus, joined the faculty of the Harvard Business
School in 1985. He joined the Monitor Company in 1999 as Managing
Director of the Organizational Strategy Practice. He was LaClare
Professor of Finance and Business Administration at the William
E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration, University
of Rochester, from 1984-1988, Professor from 1979-1984, Associate
Professor from 1971-1979, and Assistant Professor from 1967-1971.
He founded the Managerial Economics Research Center at the University
of Rochester in 1977 and served as its Director until 1988.

Professor Jensen earned his Ph.D. in Economics, Finance, and
Accounting and his M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Chicago
and an A.B. degree from Macalester College. He was awarded the
honorary degree, Docteur Honoris Causa, by Universite Catholique
de Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, July, 1991 as well as by
the University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland, December 2000. In June
of 2001, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree by the
William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration, University
of Rochester, Rochester, NY. He served as a Visiting Scholar at
the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College from July 2001
to June 2002. In 2002 he was named a Fellow of the European Corporate
Governance Institure (ECGI).

Professor Jensen is the author of more than 50 scientific papers,
in addition to numerous articles, comments, and editorials published
in the popular media on a wide range of economic, finance and
business-related topics. He is author of Foundations of Organizational
Strategy (Harvard University Press, 1998), and Theory of the Firm:
Governance, Residual Claims, and Organizational Forms (Harvard
University Press, 2000). He is editor of The Modern Theory of
Corporate Finance (with Clifford W. Smith, Jr., McGraw-Hill, 1984)
and Studies in the Theory of Capital Markets (Praeger Publishers,
1972). He founded the Journal of Financial Economics, one of the
top two scientific journals in financial economics, in 1973, serving
as Managing Editor from 1987 to 1997, when he became Founding
Editor. From 1992 through 1998 he served on the steering committee
of the Mind Brain Behavior Initiative at Harvard University (a
Harvard interfaculty effort to bring together a wide range of
scholars interested in understanding the limitations of the human
brain and its role in generating counter-productive human behavior).
In 1994 he co-founded and is Chairman of Social Science Electronic
Publishing, Inc. which is devoted to the electronic publication
of scientific work.

Dr. Jensen was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
in 1996. In 1990, he was named "Scholar of the Year"
by the Eastern Finance Association and one of the "Year's
25 Most Fascinating Business People" by Fortune magazine.
He received a 1989 McKinsey Award for his paper "Eclipse
of the Public Corporation," and was awarded the Joseph Coolidge
Shaw, S.J. Medal by Boston College in 1984. Dr. Jensen was also
awarded (with William Meckling) the Graham and Dodd Plaque given
by the Financial Analysts Federation in May, 1979 for their paper
"Can the Corporation Survive?" Dr. Jensen and his co-author,
William Meckling, received the first Leo Melamed Prize for outstanding
scholarship by business school teachers from the University of
Chicago's Graduate School of Business in March, 1979 for their
paper, "Theory of the Firm: Managerial Behavior, Agency Costs,
and Ownership Structure." In 1984, this paper was identified
as one of the most cited items in its field and named a Citation
Classic by the Institute for Scientific Information.

Dr. Jensen has served as consultant to various corporations,
foundations and governmental agencies and has given expert testimony
before congressional and state committees and state and federal
courts. He has lectured widely at seminars, meetings, conventions
and educational institutions. He is Past President of the American
Finance Association and the Western Economic Association International.