Professor of Finance named ECGI Fellow

(Press-News.org) AUSTIN, Texas -- In recognition of her research and scholarship, Laura Starks, a professor of finance at The University of Texas at Austin, was recently named a fellow of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI). She is among eight new fellows selected from academia in Europe and the United States. ECGI, founded in 2002, is an international scientific nonprofit association that serves as a forum on corporate governance among academics, legislators, and practitioners.

Starks is the George Kozmetsky Centennial University Distinguished Chair in the McCombs School of Business. She teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on environmental, social, and governance investing. Her research focuses on sustainable finance issues, including climate finance and corporate governance; institutional investor issues, including shareholder activism; and household finance topics, including long-term return expectations. Corporate governance encompasses the rules, practices, and processes that direct and control a company.

“Laura’s appointment as an ECGI fellow is a great honor not just for her, but also for the McCombs School of Business,” said Clemens Sialm, chair of the department. “The ECGI is a very prestigious international association focusing on major corporate governance issues. The institute awards the title of fellow to the most accomplished researchers in the area of corporate governance and stewardship. Laura’s research enhanced our understanding of corporate governance and had a big impact on economic policy and business practice. We all are very proud of Laura’s appointment!”

Current fellows selected the latest group in January. Julian Franks, a finance professor at the London Business School, chaired the selection committee. “ECGI has a tradition of recognizing the top academics around the world. … This year’s appointees are long-deserving and representative of the best-in-class scholarship that ECGI is renowned for,” he said.

The other new fellows are Alon Brav, Duke University; Jill Fisch, University of Pennsylvania Law School; Mariassunta Giannetti, Stockholm School of Economics; Wei Jiang, Emory University; Ulrike Malmendier, University of California, Berkeley; Curtis Milhaupt, Stanford Law School; and Holger Spamann, Harvard Law School.

Collectively, the new appointees have published research in the top academic journals worldwide and have consulted for government institutions, businesses, and numerous other respected bodies while maintaining an impressive range of international credentials and appointments. Their work is commonly cited and has inspired new research in the field of corporate governance and stewardship.

Starks is also a research member of ECGI, a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a senior fellow of the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research. She has served as president of the Society for Financial Studies, the Western Finance Association, the Financial Management Association, and the American Finance Association.

She is the advisory editor for the Financial Analysts Journal and Financial Management. Starks is a former editor of The Review of Financial Studies. She serves or has served on the board of directors for mutual funds, on pension fund advisory committees, on the board of governors of the Investment Company Institute, on the Governing Council of the Independent Directors Council, and on advisory committees for the Government Pension Fund of Norway.

In 2022, Starks received two of sustainable finance’s most coveted global research awards: the Skandia Research Award on Long-Term Savings and the Moskowitz Prize.

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