Paola Sapienza, Professor of Finance and Zell Center Faculty Fellow Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University

Paola Sapienza is a professor of finance at the Kellogg School of Management. She also serves as a faculty fellow for the Zell Center for Risk Research, a research affiliate of the Center for Economic Policy Research and a faculty research fellow in the National Bureau of Economic Research's program on corporate finance.

Sapienza’s areas of expertise include banking and financial institutions, behavioral economics, behavioral finance, corporate finance, emerging markets and regulation of financial markets. Sapienza has written articles on banking, social capital, trust and financial development. Her work has been published in such journals as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and Science. She currently serves as an associate editor of Management Science.

In 2010, Sapienza’s paper, “Trusting the Stock Market,” received a prestigious Smith Breeden Distinguished Paper Award at the American Finance Association’s annual meeting. She also won the 2002 Nasdaq award for best paper in capital formation. Both papers were authored with Guiso and Zingales.

In 2009, Sapienza launched the Chicago Booth/Kellogg School Financial Trust Index, a measure of confidence Americans have in the private institutions in which they can invest their money, along with Luigi Zingales (University of Chicago Booth School of Business). It is calculated quarterly on a sample of 1,000 American adults. This index was created as a means to study the changes in trust in the financial industry and its impact on investors’ decisions. Information about the study's core topics (e.g. trust) is gathered quarterly; in different quarters, this information is supplemented with data on additional topics (e.g. real estate investment, opinion about recent events).

Prior to joining Kellogg, Sapienza worked as an economist in the research department of Bank of Italy. She received a bachelor's degree in economics summa cum laude from Università Bocconi in Italy, and an MA and PhD in Economics from Harvard University.

For more information, visit: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/faculty/sapienza/htm/research.htm

Luigi Zingales, Robert C. McCormack Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and the David G. Booth Faculty Fellow
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Luigi Zingales studies the theory of the firm, the relation between organization and financing, and the going-public decision. In addition to holding his position at Chicago Booth, Zingales is currently a faculty research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research, a research fellow for the Center for Economic Policy Research, and a fellow of the European Governance Institute. He is also the director of the American Finance Associations and an editorialist for Il Sole 24 Ore, the Italian correspondent of the Financial Times. Zingales also serves on the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation, which has been examining the legislative, regulatory, and legal issues affecting how public companies function.

His research has earned him the 2003 Bernacer Prize for the best European young financial economist, the 2002 Nasdaq award for best paper in capital formation, and a National Science Foundation Grant in economics. His work has been published in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance and the American Economic Review.

His book, Saving Capitalism from Capitalists, coauthored with Raghuram G. Rajan, has been acclaimed as "one of the most powerful defenses of the free market ever written" by Bruce Bartlett of National Review Online. Martin Wolf of the Financial Times called it "an important book."

Born in Italy, a country with high inflation and unemployment that has inspired his professional interests as an economist, Zingales carries with him a political passion and the belief that economists should not just interpret the world, they should change it for the better. Commenting on his method of teaching on a few very important lessons rather than a myriad of details, Zingales says, "Twenty years from now they might have forgotten all the details of my course, but hopefully they will not have forgotten the way of thinking.

Zingales received a bachelor's degree in economics summa cum laude from Universita Bocconi in Italy in 1987 and a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1992. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 1992.

In addition to teaching and researching, Zingales enjoys cooking and spending time with his children.

For more information, visit:
http://www.chicagobooth.edu/faculty/bio.aspx?person_id=12826023936