Faculty & Research

Finance Faculty

From derivatives and quantitative portfolio management to corporate finance, fixed income and valuation, the finance faculty at Vanderbilt are among the intellectual elite. In addition to being grounded in financial theory, they are deeply connected to the dealings of everyday business. Their research has made a strong impact on the world of finance, from sweeping reforms at NASDAQ to the development of market indexes for the Chicago Board of Trade.

	Cliff Ball Professor of Finance and Statistics; Faculty Director, PhD Program MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Cliff Ball has taught Owen students statistical analysis and the intricacies of equities, bonds, options, and futures contracts since 1990. He recently co-authored the paper, “True Spreads and Equilibrium Price,” which was published in The Journal of Finance. Cliff also serves as referee for numerous research journals and is an associate editor of The Journal of Empirical Finance. Before coming to Owen, he taught at the University of Michigan and London Business School in the 1980s and worked in New York at Shearson Lehman, specializing in options and fixed income research.

	Kate Barraclough Program Director, MS Finance Program; Senior Lecturer in Finance MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Kathryn Barraclough comes to Owen with a PhD from Australian National University. Kathryn has written papers including: "A State-Contingent Claim Approach to Asset Pricing” and “Scaling Regression Equations: Solution or Problem?” Previously she was a manager at KPMG Canberra as a Financial Consultant to the Australian government.

	Jesse A. Blocher Assistant Professor of Finance MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Professor Jesse A. Blocher joined the Finance group at Owen in 2012 after completing his Ph.D. at The University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.

	Nicolas Bollen E. Bronson Ingram Research Professor of Finance MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Nicolas Bollen has had more than a dozen research papers accepted for publication since joining Owen's faculty in 2001, including eight in the top finance journals. His current research agenda is focused on hedge funds. Two of his recent papers have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Finance. Nick’s co-authored paper, “Do Hedge Fund Managers Misreport Returns? Evidence from the Pooled Distribution” was highlighted in the Wall Street Journal and has been downloaded over 1,000 times since it was made publicly available in October 2007. Video: The Study of Hedge Funds

	William Christie Frances Hampton Currey Professor of Management in Finance; Professor of Law MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Bill Christie’s studies of the major financial markets in the mid-1990s concluded that Nasdaq market makers were implicitly colluding to maintain artificially high trading profits at the expense of investors. His research resulted in sweeping reform of the Nasdaq, introduction of the SEC Order Handling Rules, and a $1.027 billion settlement against the defendants. Bill won first prize for outstanding papers published in the Journal of Finance based on this research. He is a five-time recipient of the EMBA Teaching award and was ranked either first or second among star faculty in each Business Week ranking from 1992 through 2000.

	Dewey Daane The Frank K. Houston Professor of Finance, Emeritus; Senior Advisor, Financial Markets Research Center MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Dewey Daane has had a distinguished career in government, including 35 years of combined service with the Federal Reserve System and the U.S. Treasury Department. In his teaching, Dewey focuses on the evolution of the international monetary system, and on monetary and fiscal policy. He has been a chaired professor at Owen since 1974.

	Craig Lewis, CPA Madison S. Wigginton Chair of Management; SEC Chief Economist and Director of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation Division MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Craig Lewis, the Finance-area coordinator, joined the Owen faculty in 1986 and has been widely published since that time on such financial issues as volatility, debt and capital structure. His interests include equity analyst behavior, the security issue process and corporate financial policy. In 2011, Lewis was appointed Chief Economist and Director of Risk, Strategy, and Financial Innovation Division of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

	Miguel Palacios Assistant Professor of Finance MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Miguel Palacios’ primary research interests are in the areas of asset pricing and labor economics, particularly as they relate to human capital. Miguel is an instrument-rated pilot, and has been a member of Colombia’s water skiing team. He recently ranked third (2006) and fourth (2008) on the West Coast in men’s II Trick Water Skiing.

	David Parsley E. Bronson Ingram Professor in Economics and Finance MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
David Parsley's distinguished record of achievement in the field of international finance spans both the academic and government communities. He joined the Owen faculty in 1990 after serving in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and is an expert in exchange rates and the integration of goods and services markets, financial markets and labor markets. Video: Business, Big Macs and the World Economy

	Hans Stoll The Anne Marie and Thomas B. Walker, Jr., Professor of Finance; Director, Financial Markets Research Center; Faculty Director, MS Finance Program MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Hans Stoll came to Vanderbilt in 1980 from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School where he had been a faculty member since 1966. He has published several books and more than 60 articles on subjects including the forward foreign exchange market, options, commodity futures, small business financing, the impact of institutional investors on the stock market, regulation of securities markets, the theory of dealers in securities markets, the law of one price in international commodity markets, the new option markets, the small firm effect, stock index futures, stock market structure and volatility, bid-ask spreads on the NYSE versus Nasdaq markets, and other subjects.

	Robert Whaley Valere Blair Potter Professor of Management (Finance); Co-Director, Financial Markets Research Center MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Robert Whaley is a renowned expert in the field of derivative securities, including contract valuation and risk management, market microstructure and market volatility. His distinguished teaching career, numerous articles, and many books have brought him national and international recognition in both the business and academic worlds. Among his many industry innovations are the development of the Market Volatility Index (VIX), the NASDAQ Market Volatility Index (VXN) and the BuyWrite Monthly Index (BXM) for the Chicago Board Options Exchange

Affiliated Faculty

	Wilson Freyermuth Adjunct Professor of Management Curators' Teaching Professor, John D. Lawson Professor of Law, Columbia School of Law MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Professor Freyermuth joined the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University faculty as an adjunct in 2007 and visits Nashville to teach Commercial Real Estate Transactions during our spring semester. He is also the Curators' Teaching Professor at University of Missouri, Columbia Law School and teaches in the areas of Property, Real Estate, and Secured Transactions, and has co-authored widely-used texts in all three areas.

	Roberta W. Goodman Adjunct Professor of Management Principal, Health Care Analytics LLC MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Roberta Goodman, a well-respected health care analyst, will join the faculty of the Health Care MBA program at Vanderbilt's Owen Graduate School of Management in January. A perennial favorite on lists of top analysts in financial publications including the Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor, Goodman is now a principal with Nashville-based Health Care Analytics, a strategic consulting firm specializing in the health care services industry.

	Martin Heflin Faculty Director, Real Estate Emphasis; Adjunct Professor of Real Estate Finance; Founder, M2H Group MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Marty Heflin began his real estate career with Trammell Crow Residential in North Florida. With Trammell Crow, Marty developed over 1,000 apartment homes in the Southeast. Later, with Wood Partners Marty developed 800 more units in the Nashville and Washington DC markets. He then formed the M2H Group to pursue his dream of building a multifamily development firm predicated on the principles of quality and sustainable design and innovative vision.

	Thomas Ho Research Professor of Financial Markets MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Thomas Ho is President of Thomas Ho Company Ltd (THC), a New York based financial engineering company. THC licenses portfolio and risk systems and provides professional services in risk management. Tom has published extensively. He was named one of the most prolific authors in finance based on a study by Cooley and Heck, Journal of Finance (2003).

	Grant Kinnett Adjunct Professor of Management MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Grant Kinnett is responsible for Boyle Nashville’s retail property portfolio which consists of 800,000 square feet and over 1.8 million square feet in the planning and development stages.

	Thomas McDaniel Adjunct Professor of Real Estate Finance MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Thomas McDaniel oversees Boyle Investment Company’s office portfolio in Nashville, which includes over 1 million SF of existing space and another 3.5 million SF in the planning and development stages. Thomas handles Boyle’s leasing, acquisition, development and tenant representation activities for office properties.

	William Megginson Adjunct Professor of Management Rainbolt Chair in Finance & Professor of Finance, University of Oklahoma, Price College of Business MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Bill Megginson is a Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management and Professor and Rainbolt Chair in Finance at the University of Oklahoma’s Michael F. Price College of Business. He is also Executive Director of the Privatization Barometer.

	Christoph Schenzler Research Associate of Finance MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Christoph Schenzler teaches Financial Data Analysis, which introduces Owen students to the many financial databases used in empirical research in finance. Christoph, who has taught at Vanderbilt since 1989, also maintains and develops databases that are used by investigators in finance, accounting and economics.

	Christian Schlag Visiting Professor of Finance; Professor of Finance, Goethe University MORE ABOUT THIS FACULTY MEMBER
Christian Schlag is a Professor of Finance at Goethe University Frankfurt and is Director of the Ph.D. Program in Finance. Christian has held visiting appointments at Vanderbilt University and at the University of Melbourne. His current research focuses on asset pricing and asset allocation in continuous-time models and on the pricing and hedging of derivative securities.