Thought Leadership

Faculty Highlights

Professors are the heart and soul of Brandeis International Business School - dedicated researchers whose interests span economics, business and finance, from marketing and sustainability to asset management and data analytics. Here are highlights about some of our thought leaders.

Debarshi Nandy

Professor Nandy's research focuses on corporate finance and financial intermediation, with special interest in IPOs, venture capital financing and security issuance. Much of his research utilizes census data to analyze value creation in private firms and the growth. He has presented at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) on how increased access to financing affects firm productivity, and has offered his expertise to such media outlets as CNN and The Economist.

Catherine Mann

Dr. Mann has over 20 years' experience in policy institutions and think tanks in Washington D.C., including the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, the President's Council of Economic Advisers at the White House, and the World Bank. Her research on international trade and the globalization of information technology has been published in the Review of International Economics, Business Economics, and the Journal of Economic Perspectives. She is a regular commentator on the global economy for PBS' NewsHour, CNN, Bloomberg and other major media outlets.

Dan Bergstresser

Prof. Bergstresser’s research focuses on municipal finance and the impact of taxation, regulation, and market structure on financial markets. He was featured in the documentary  "Confidence Game"  and has been featured in publications such as  the Huffington Post  and  Bloomberg . He earned a PhD in economics at MIT and an AB at Stanford. In 2006 and 2007, he worked for the investment manager Barclays Global Investors, serving in London as Head of European Credit Research.

Judith Dean

A former senior economist at the US International Trade Commission, Professor Dean's current research explores the possibility that trade growth, foreign investment and production fragmentation in China may have beneficial effects on its environment. She has also testified before  a Senate commission about US/China trade , and does scholarship on supply chains in Asia. She previously taught at Johns Hopkins University and Bowdoin College.

Jens Hilscher

Hilscher concentrates on the pricing effects of credit and distress risk on stocks and bonds, and has received awards from the Review of Finance and the Eastern Finance Association. He has worked on investigating both firm as well as country level risk. He earned a PhD at Harvard University and both a BSc and MSc degree at the London School of Economics.

Andrew Molinsky

Prof. Molinsky is an expert on cross-cultural business. In his scholarship he explores a concept he calls global dexterity - the ability of business professionals to successfully "switch" their behavior when working in other countries or with people from other cultures. His work has been featured in  the Economist ,  NPR ,  Fast Company  and other outlets.

Blake LeBaron

The agent-based financial modeling that Prof. LeBaron has developed gives economists the tools to understand complex market patterns, especially as it relates to key market failures like the Flash Crash of 2010. Among his scholarship is a series of papers he has published in journals such as the American Economic Review and the Journal of International Economics. He has collaborated with other departments at Brandeis under the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) grant, and also recently received a $34,000 grant from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET) to pursue his research in more detail.

George Hall

Formerly a researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and a professor at Yale University, George Hall focuses his research on macroeconomics and industrial organization. In his recent work he has studied how firms optimally set prices over time to manage their inventories. He is currently collaborating with 2011 Nobel Prize winner Tom Sargent on a book investigating the entire history of debt in the United States. ( Read a PDF of the working paper .)

PRACTITIONER BRIEFS

Brandeis IBS faculty are thought leaders in their fields and publish their research and insights through our Centers and Initiatives.

Highlights include:

• George Hall, "How Will We Pay Down the Bush-Obama Debt? Lessons from the Last 60 Years"
  

  By the end of 2009, privately-held U.S. Treasury debt stood at 53.0 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), doubling the total from just nine years ago. As one professor asks: "How can we as a nation cover these interest payments and ultimately pay off this debt?"

• Warren Leon, "Clean Energy in Perspective"
  

  Although clean energy is likely to have a bright future, will it live up to the more extravagant predictions of its boosters? This paper discusses the current reality and future prospects of clean energy businesses in the U.S. and abroad.

• Raphael Schoenle, "How Do Dollar Exchange Rate Movements Get Passed Through into US Import Prices?"
  

  An assistant professor of economics addresses exchange rate movements and provides three insights that contribute to a better understanding of their effect on U.S. import prices.