I’m Alex Edmans, professor of finance, author, speaker, board member, and advisor.
I focus on purposeful business, sustainable investing, corporate governance, and behavioural finance.
This website contains both academic research and resources for practitioners. The latter include newspaper articles, submissions to policy consultations, blog posts and talks.
PROFESSOR OF THE YEAR
I’m Alex Edmans, professor of finance, author, speaker, board member, and advisor.
I focus on purposeful business, sustainable investing, corporate governance, and behavioural finance.
This website contains both academic research and resources for practitioners. The latter include newspaper articles, submissions to policy consultations, blog posts and talks.
PROFESSOR OF THE YEAR
What I do
A Theory of Fair CEO Pay forthcoming in American Economic Review: Insights
Optimal executive pay when CEOs are motivated not only by consumption incentives, but notions of fairness.
October 2024
Sustainable Investing in Practice: Objectives, Constraints, and Limits to Impact
We survey 509 equity portfolio managers on whether, why, and how they incorporate ES factors into investment decisions. Financial considerations are the primary reason, even among sustainable funds; few will sacrifice financial returns for ES due to fiduciary duty. Many traditional funds view ES as financially material and voluntarily incorporate it.
May 2025
Does the Carbon Premium Reflect Risk or Outperformance?
Companies with higher carbon emissions enjoy higher earnings surprises; earnings announcement returns account for 30-50% of the carbon premium. The carbon premium may result from outperformance (companies can “get away with” emitting) rather than a higher cost of capital.
April 2025
What Social Responsibilities Should Companies Have? A New Approach. Wall Street Journal.
October 2023
A Progressive’s Case for Getting Rid of ‘ESG’. Wall Street Journal.
August 2023
Does Sustainable Investing Really Help the Environment? Wall Street Journal debate with Tariq Fancy.
November 2021
TEDx talk on how companies can grow the pie for both stakeholders and shareholders.
What to Trust in a Post-Truth World
TED talk on critical thinking and the importance of discernment with data and evidence.
The Purpose of a Finance Professor.
Keynote speech at the 2021 Financial Management Association annual meeting.
May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It is my book on how our biases cause us to fall for misinformation, and how to combat it. Published in April 2024 by Penguin Random House.
Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit is my book on the business case for purposeful business. It was one of the Financial Times Books of the Year and has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, and Turkish.
Principles of Corporate Finance is the classic corporate finance textbook previously written by Brealey, Myers, and Allen. I joined the book in the 14th edition to bolster the content on responsible business, corporate governance and behavioral finance, make the book more global, and improve the pedagogy throughout with clear explanations, precise definitions, and simple language.
Do Banks Offer Complex Mortgages to Mislead Customers? Banks are often accused of making money off complex products that consumers don’t understand.
How Political Connections Can Hurt, Rather Then Help, Firm Value We often think of political connections as clearly favoring a company. Perhaps the most extreme example is Donald Trump owning around 500…
What Drives the Cost of Default Insurance? One of the many negative consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic is that companies may default. Companies going bankrupt are indeed less…