This summer there have been so many accomplishments at a time when the public think that we are just "on vacation" that I thought they would merit a blogspot. Besides being intellectual leaders, my colleagues are terrific educators and also genuinely nice and very interesting people.
My readers know that in late June and July I was in Greece co-organizing the Dynamics of Disasters conference with Professor Pardalos of the University of Florida and Professor Kotsireas of Wilfrid University in Canada.
We were in Kalamata, Greece on June 29, 2015 (the first day of our conference) when the banks closed due to the Greek financial crisis and the lines at the ATM machines (which had financial funds left) were growing.
My Isenberg colleague, Professor Nikos Artavanis of the Finance Department, meanwhile, had been researching the crisis and what to do about it. His study, co-authored with two colleagues from the Booth School at the University of Chicago, "Tax Evasion Across Industries: Soft Credit Evidence from Greece," revealed that tax evasion was most prevalent among Greece's highly educated professionals, that is, doctors, lawyers, engineers, accountants, and even journalists. Hence, what was needed, was a good tax collector in Greece! Nikos's paper received international attention and a writeup from CBS News can be found here.
Professor Artavanis, by the way, is Greek, and he often brings me back some Greek coffee from his travels there, which I very much appreciate.
And, another Finance professor at Isenberg, Dr. Mila Getmansky Sherman, with whom last September, along with my Operations and Information Management colleague, Professor Senay Solak, and Engineering colleague, Professor Wayne Burleson, we organized a great (I am biased but it was terrific) cybersecurity workshop at the Sloan School of MIT, also had great media coverage of her latest research. It was conducted with Professor Andrew Lo of MIT (who was a keynote speaker at our workshop). The paper, "Hedge Funds: A Dynamic Industry in Transition," was also co-authored with Peter Lee. According to the study, "due to inherent biases in the way hedge-fund databases compile results, the industry's returns have been about half as strong as they appear," as reported by Bloomberg News. The interview and report can be accessed here.
My Marketing Department colleagues, Professors Charles Schewe and George Milne (who is also Isenberg's PhD Program Director), completed, along with two of our doctoral students and a colleague from Australia, a fascinating study on baby boomers and aging. Their findings, according to the University of Technology Sydney, in Australia:
- They found that what counts isn’t how many birthdays you’ve had but social, mental and biological factors.
- With the help of the subjective age index, you may be able to correct any of those factors so you can ‘manage’ your age.
My Accounting Department colleague, Professor David Piercey, shook up the auditing world this summer with his paper, which, through behavioral experiments, showed that forcing companies to periodically change their auditing firms can prove counterproductive. His paper was published this summer in The Accounting Review. This research received extensive coverage in the accounting press.
And, Professor Bradley Bennett, also of Accounting, recently, received a big honor, the Wildman Medal Award, for his co-authored paper, with Professor Hatfield of the University of Alabama, "The Effect of the Social Mismatch Between Staff Auditors and Client Management on the Collection of Audit Evidence."
There are many other achievements but the above, I believe, provide a wonderful snapshot of the kind of research and activities that faculty at a business school, and, especially the Isenberg School of Management, engage in.
Having such successful and very active faculty keeps one constantly striving and achieving but, then again, we certainly love what we do!
Posts
