The Wisconsin School of Business welcomes five new faculty members this academic year, four who started with the fall semester, and one who will join in the spring. It is the second year in a row that the school had a net gain in tenure-track faculty members. Last fall, eight new faculty members joined the school.

Dean Michael Knetter said the caliber of faculty members the school was able to recruit is exceptional. “We are fortunate to have had the resources to recruit in what appears to be a buyer’s market for talent,” he said. “These new faculty members will help strengthen our intellectual foundation and improve our visibility and national reputation for thought leadership. We hope and expect to have another strong recruiting season this year.”

The five new faculty members, by department, are:

Finance, Investment and Banking

Professor Randall Wright

Randall Wright—one of the world’s best known and most prolific researchers in monetary and macroeconomics—is the Ray B. Zemon Chair in Liquid Assets in the school’s Department of Finance, Investment and Banking and will also hold an appointment in the Economics Department. Previously, he was the James Joon-Jin Kim Professor of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Wright’s research is widely recognized as among the very best in the field over the past several decades. Nobel Laureate, Robert Lucas from Chicago, has referred to Wright as “an internationally recognized world leader in all areas of macroeconomic research.”

Wright is perhaps best known for his work on monetary theory, yet also has contributed significantly in labor economics. He has won several awards for his research, including the Harry Johnson Prize for best article in the Canadian Journal of Economics and the Kenneth Arrow Prize for best article in the Berkeley Electronic Press Journals. Wright will bring his tremendous knowledge and intelligence to the classroom with a course on “Markets with Frictions,” which the school anticipates will be path breaking for our business students.

Recognition of Wright’s ability to contribute to economic policy is evidenced through his appointments as a research associate of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the Bank of Canada and the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society.

He earned his B.A. in economics from the University of Manitoba in Canada and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota. In 1990, he was awarded an honorary M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Wright joined Penn as an assistant professor in 1987, after three years with Cornell University. He served one-year stints as a national fellow with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and as an economist with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. In fall 1986, he spent a semester as a visiting assistant professor in the Economics Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wright will teach courses in both the Wisconsin School of Business and in the Economics Department in the College of Letters and Science.

Management and Human Resources

Assistant Professor Chad Navis

Chad Navis joins the business school from the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, where he just recently completed his Ph.D. He has an MBA from the University of Georgia and a B.S. in Industrial Management from Clemson University.

His dissertation focused on how founders’ prior experience affects the survival of new ventures. He has been a presenter at several conferences of the Academy of Management, and others.

At Goizueta, he was a teaching associate and taught several lectures on advanced entrepreneurship. His teaching interests focus on entrepreneurship, strategy, and technology and innovation management.

His industry experience includes an internship as a planning and control analyst for the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and as a senior business analyst with American Management Systems.

Operations and Information Management

Assistant Professor Zigeng Liu

Zigeng Liu joins the business school from Northwestern University, where she just earned her Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences.

She previously earned M.Sc. degrees in Industrial Engineering and Management Sciences and in Physics and Astronomy from Northwestern. Her B.Sc. in Physics is from Peking University in Beijing, China.

Her research interests include design of robust supply chains, pricing in supply chains, and supply chain competition. Her papers entitled “Strategic Risk from Supply Chain Disruptions,” “The Role of Wholesale-Salespersons and Incentive Plans in Promoting Supply Chain Performance,” and “Protecting Supply Chain Networks against Catastrophic Failures” are in various stages of review at leading journals. Her industry experience includes internships with a General Motors R&D Center and with Argonne National Laboratory.

Real Estate and Urban Land Economics

Professor Abdullah Yavas

Abdullah Yavas, an international leader in real estate economics and finance, joins the Department of Real Estate and Urban Land Economics. Previously, he was with the Smeal College of Business Administration at Penn State, where he was the Elliott Professor of Business Administration and research director of the Institute for Real Estate Studies. Yavas is also a member of the Monetary Policy Committee of the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey.

Yavas is one of the most published authors in the real estate field. His work has appeared in leading journals, including the Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Real Estate Economics, the Journal of Urban Economics, Journal of Financial Economics and Journal of Economic Theory. He is currently a member of the editorial boards of nine leading academic journals. His research is often cited in media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Money, and TIME magazine. He was awarded the Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (Fred Brand Jr.) Award from Smeal in 2001.

He earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Iowa. He also has a B.A. from Bobazici University in Istanbul, Turkey.

Assistant Professor Erwan Quintin (starting January 2010)

Erwan Quintin is a senior economist and policy advisor for the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas.He earned his MBA in finance from Case Western Reserve University and his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota.

His research has been published in the Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Macroeconomics, and European Economic Review, among others.

Posted in Faculty-Staff News, Research Excellence