Milton Harris, an expert in corporate finance and the Chicago Board of Trade Professor of Finance and Economics at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, has been elected a fellow of the American Finance Association.
Fellows are chosen in recognition of their distinguished contribution to the field of finance. Harris is the fifth member of the Chicago Booth faculty to receive the honor since it was first awarded in 2000.
Harris “has produced path-breaking research in several areas of corporate finance and on the economic theory of information,” the group’s announcement noted. “Among many important results, he is particularly recognized for his work on the design of securities, of firms, and more generally of organizations. Harris has frequently uncovered important new insights stemming from the role of asymmetric information, particularly in settings involving contract design and agency relationships.”
During the current academic year he is teaching courses in introductory finance and the economics of information. Harris says he hopes his teaching and research “change the way people think about corporate governance and in particular how they interpret some well-known stylized facts.”
Harris is the author of Dynamic Economic Analysis, published by Oxford University Press and editor of Handbook of the Economics of Finance, with Chicago Booth professor George Constantinides and Rene Stulz. He also has written many academic journal articles, including “A Theory of Board Control and Size,” published in the Review of Financial Studies and “Corporate Governance: Voting Rights and Majority Rules,” published in the Journal of Financial Economics, both co-written with Artur Raviv.
Harris received his A.M. and Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago, and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Rice University.
Other Chicago Booth faculty members who are fellows of the American Finance Association are George Constantinides, the Leo Melamed Professor of Finance; Douglas Diamond, the Merton H. Miller Distinguished Service Professor of Finance; Eugene Fama, the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance; and Richard Thaler, the Ralph and Dorothy Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavioral Science and Economics.
—Prof. Kunle Odunsi
