Current Bettis Scholar

The Carr and Stephanie Bettis Distinguished Scholar Award Program's Spring 2012 Bettis Scholar is David Yermack , Albert Fingerhut Professor of Finance and Business Transformation at New York University (NYU) Stern School of Business.

Yermack, who teaches courses in corporate finance, restructuring firms and industries, and law and finance has been with NYU Stern since 1994. His primary research areas include boards of directors, executive compensation, executive stock options, and law and finance. He has been published in many journals including Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, and Journal of Law, Economics, and Organizations.

Yermack received his Bachelor of Arts in economics, Master of Business Administration, Jurist Doctor degree, Master of Arts in business economics, and Doctor of Philosophy in business economics from Harvard University.

In the January 2011 Bettis Scholar Seminar at ASU, Yermack presented his work, "The Michelle Markup: The First Lady’s Impact on Stock Prices of Fashion Companies," in which he analyzes “changes in apparel company stock prices when Michelle Obama wears designer outfits at public events.”  His work indicates that “company stock prices rise significantly when the First Lady wears their clothing, increasing about 1.7% in the week following her most closely watched appearances and by about half as much after routine events.” He also shows that “internet users search the names of individual designers with higher frequency after the First Lady wears their creations at major events, a pattern likely associated with surges in online product sales.”

Yermack also engaged in two lectures for doctoral students regarding his work and extensively interacted with faculty and Ph.D. students.

The Carr and Stephanie Bettis Distinguished Scholar Award Program's  Fall 2011 Bettis Scholar is Ravi Bansal , J. B. Fuqua Professor of Finance at The Fuqua School of Business at Duke University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Bansal is a leader in the field of financial economics. His research spans asset pricing, liquidity, and climate change. He has published in leading journals such as the Journal of Political Economy, American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of International Economics, and Review of Economic Studies among others.

His work on Long-Run Risks won the prestigious Smith-Breeden award presented by the American Finance Association. The Long-Run Risks model provides a foundation for analyzing prices in equity markets, bond markets, and currency markets. His work on climate change measures the economic costs of climate change and explores the impact of climate change on economic growth and asset markets. His ongoing research on liquidity in credit markets develops a model of endogenous supply of government and private debt to analyze optimal debt policy and measure the impact of policies such as quantitative easing.

In the September 2011 Bettis Scholar Seminar at ASU, Bansal presented his work, "Volatility, the Macroeconomy and Asset Prices," co-authored with Dana Kiku, Ivan Shaliastovich and Amir Yaron of The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. The authors show that changing economic uncertainty (i.e., volatility) is an important risk-source that critically affects the risk premia in financial markets. They show that including volatility risk helps identify the economic shocks that lead to the collapse in asset prices in 2008, as well understand the relation between returns to equity and human capital in the long-run.

Bansal also engaged in two lectures for doctoral students regarding his pioneering work on Long-Run Risks and extensively interacted with faculty and Ph.D. students.

Bansal teaches courses in asset pricing, global economics, and investments and is a finalist for the best teacher award in the day-time MBA program. Many of his Ph.D. students have placed at leading academic institutions and in the risk management industry. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from Carnegie Mellon University.

Previous Bettis Scholars include Professors Ravi Bansal, Duke University; Peter DeMarzo, Stanford University; Philip E. Strahan, Boston College; Richard C. Green, Carnegie Mellon University; Maureen O’Hara, Cornell University; Randall Morck, University of Alberta; Wayne Ferson, University of Southern California; and Kose John, New York University.

For further information about other seminars sponsored by the Department of Finance that are open to the public, refer to the Seminar Series.