Jonathan Berk is the Professor of Finance in the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He currently teaches the introductory Corporate Finance course for first-year MBA students at Berkeley. Before getting his Ph.D., he worked as an Associate at Goldman Sachs, where his education in finance really began.

Professor Berk is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance. His research interests in finance include corporate valuation, capital structure, mutual funds, asset pricing, experimental economics, and labor economics. His work has won a number of research awards including the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award, the Smith Breeden Prize, Best Paper of the Year in The Review of Financial Studies, and the FAME Research Prize. His paper, “A Critique of Size Related Anomalies,” was recently selected as one of the two best papers ever published in The Review of Financial Studies. In recognition of his influence on the practice of finance he has received the Bernstein-Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award, the Graham and Dodd Award of Excellence, and the Roger F. Murray Prize.

Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Professor Berk is married, with two daughters aged 10 and 14, and is an avid skier and biker.

 

Peter DeMarzo is the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He currently teaches the "turbo” core finance course for Stanford’s first-year MBA students. In addition to his experience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Professor DeMarzo has taught at the Haas School of Business and the Kellogg Graduate School of Management, and he was a National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Professor DeMarzo received the Sloan Teaching Excellence Award at Stanford in 2004 and 2006, and the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at U.C. Berkeley in 1998. Professor DeMarzo has served as an Associate Editor for The Review of Financial Studies, Financial Management, and the B.E. Journals in Economic Analysis and Policy, as well as a Director of the Western Finance Association. Professor DeMarzo’s research is in the area of corporate finance, asset securitization, and contracting, as well as market structure and regulation. His recent work has examined issues of the optimal design of securities, the regulation of insider trading and broker-dealers, and the influence of information asymmetries on corporate investment. He has received numerous awards including the Western Finance Association Corporate Finance Award and the Barclays Global Investors/Michael Brennan best-paper award from The Review of Financial Studies.

Professor DeMarzo was born in Whitestone, New York and is married with three boys. He and his family enjoy hiking, biking, and skiing.