New Faculty Make Their Mark at McCombs

Marketing

Jason A. Duan, assistant professor, joins McCombs after serving as a postdoctoral associate at Yale. Originally from Nanjing, China, he earned a master’s degree in economics and his Ph.D. in statistics from Duke University. Duan’s research interests include price distribution across geographic markets and how members of social networks such asMySpace influence one another. “I’m excited to be here because McCombs is such a strong school, and UT in general is a renowned research university,” Duan says. “Also, I love Austin!”

Finance

Assistant Professor Jonathan Cohn earned his MBA from Washington University in St. Louis and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Cohn studies the incentive effects of executive compensation and how financial markets affect corporate investment decisions. His most recent study examines possible adverse economic effects of preventing earnings manipulation. “McCombs has top researchers at all levels,” Cohn says. “There is also a vibrant junior faculty that I really think will make up the next generation of leadership in business research.” Prior to entering academia, Cohn worked in commercial banking. He also was a litigation consultant for the U.S. Department of Justice, where he assisted with expert testimony preparation.

Shimon Kogan, assistant professor, comes to McCombs from the Tepper School at Carnegie Mellon. He studies behavioral finance, capital markets and market efficiency. His current research shows it is possible that actions and information provided by financial markets may work to reinforce perceptions of underlying economic weakness, and that asset markets themselves may sometimes be the cause of poor economic performance. “We want to explore how information facilitated by common accounting disclosure practices contributes to the down-spiral in the financial service industry,” says Kogan. Prior to entering academia, Kogan worked in investment banking and corporate finance. He has a bachelor’s degree from Tel Aviv University in Israel and earned his MBA and Ph.D. in finance from the University of California, Berkeley.

Management

After working as a physical therapist for four years throughout Australia and Ireland, Craig Crossland realized he needed a career change. “I wasn’t very good at it,” Crossland says. He turned to business, joining Neurotech in Ireland as a product development manager and earning his MBA from University College in Dublin, Ireland. He discovered a passion for research and teaching and went on to earn his Ph.D. from Penn State University. He joins McCombs as an assistant professor, with research interests in strategic and international management, primarily in managerial discretion, or how top executives affect an organization’s performance. His findings thus far have shown that executives from Western countries such as the United States tend to have a larger influence on a company’s strategy, while CEOs from East Asian countries such as Japan typically serve more of a figurehead role. Crossland is also on the advisory boards for Australian companies BakPhysio and Health and Ageing Solutions.

Information, Risk, and Operations Management (IROM)

IROM Professor Robert McCulloch holds the Century Club Professorship and comes to McCombs from the University of Chicago. He is internationally recognized for his research in econometrics and statistics, with a focus on Bayesian statistics in relation to data mining, finance and marketing.

“Modern computing has led to an explosion of data and created the need to find new ways to capture that information,” McCulloch says. “There are outstanding, top-flight researchers here at McCombs and across the university I look forward to collaborating with.”

McCulloch is a fellow in the American Statistical Association and has published numerous articles on statistical research. He received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics from the University of Toronto and earned his master’s degree and Ph.D. in statistics from the University of Minnesota.

“We’ve been very fortunate to attract someone of Rob’s caliber and abilities,” says IROM professor Tom Shively, who helped recruit McCulloch. “He is going to contribute a great deal to the McCombs research environment and our undergraduate, MBA and Ph.D. programs.”

Professor Sridhar Seshadri comes to McCombs from the Stern School at New York University. “The opportunity to do real supply chain work with firms in Austin and neighboring areas as well as the growing reputation of the supply chain program brought me here,” Seshadri says. He received his bachelor of technology in mechanical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, his PGDM from the Indian Institute of Management and his Ph.D. in management science from the University of California, Berkeley. He has published dozens of articles, and his research interests are in problems related to planning, coordination and optimization in supply chains; performance evaluation of queuing systems; and the impact of risk on operational decisions.

Accounting

Shuping Chen, assistant professor, comes to McCombs from the University of Washington, where she twice earned the Beta Alpha Psi Professor of the Year Award. She earned her Ph.D. in accounting from the University of Southern California and studies corporate voluntary disclosure practices and expectations management; earnings management and earnings quality; financial intermediaries and their roles in the capital market; and financial reporting issues. “Accounting is the language of business,” says Chen. “I am curious about how the language of business conveys the economic performance of firms, and how investors react to this language.”

When Assistant Professor John McInnis taught his first course in a University Teaching Center (UTC) classroom this fall, he was a bit unnerved, but not because of first-day jitters or unfamiliar surroundings. McInnis had been in the UTC on many prior occasions— but only as a student. He earned his BBA and MPA at McCombs and, after obtaining his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa, is happy to return to campus. “It’s a little weird being back as a faculty member, but I love it here,” he says. McInnis researches the long-term effects of firms’ earnings management activities and the relationship between accounting and risk. He teaches financial accounting and is excited to see how the curriculum might change in the next few years in light of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s plan to steer U.S. companies towards international accounting standards, which are less rigid and more conceptual than U.S. regulations.

After traveling around the globe as a consultant for Deloitte and Touche for six years, Assistant Professor Jeri Seidman was ready for a change, but she worried that being a firm’s in-house accountant would not provide the variety she desired. Having earned her master of accountancy from Case Western Reserve University, she chose to pursue academia and went on to receive a Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Seidman studies corporate tax and financial reporting and says teaching provides the stimulation she relished in the private sector. “If you can teach someone about a subject, that means you really understand it, and that’s a great feeling.”

Nicholas Seybert, assistant professor, is happy to crunch numbers, but he is most interested in the psychology behind various accounting practices. He studies how accounting standards and regulations affect managers’ propensity for earnings manipulation and how wishful thinking can be contagious in the stock market, creating a sort of optimism bubble. Seybert earned both a master’s degree in management and a Ph.D. in accounting from Cornell University, and he says he is honored to join the top accounting department in the country. “This is definitely the place to be,” Seybert says. “Truly world class.”