Explore the faculty research, thought leadership, and groundbreaking philosophies that established Michigan Ross as one of the world’s top business schools.
Building on his experience as an attorney at the Federal Reserve, the 2020-22 research of Assistant Professor Jeremy Kress has identified critical weaknesses in bank merger oversight and proposed strategies to reinvigorate bank merger enforcement. Kress' work has shown that lax bank merger oversight has harmed consumers, businesses, and the broader financial system. His research has demonstrated that the prevailing approach to bank merger regulation has increased the cost and reduced the availability of consumer credit, inflated the fees that banks charge for basic financial services, limited small business credit availability, and threatened financial stability. Kress' research has pushed bank merger reform onto the policy agenda in Washington, D.C. by serving as a blueprint for legislation introduced by Senator Elizabeth Warren and inspiring an executive order on bank mergers by President Joe Biden. The Department of Justice also invited Kress to lead a joint initiative with the federal banking agencies to rewrite their bank merger policies.
Changes in health care structure following World War II brought the need for increased legislation, regulations, and court oversight to the industry. Professor Arthur Southwick of the Michigan Business School was a leader in developing these diverse sources into a coherent framework that enabled academics, healthcare leaders, and students to understand this emerging area of law.
According to Wharton Professor Arnold Rosoff, Southwick's book, The Law of Hospital and Health Care Administration, first published in 1978, "was a central fixture in the field's literature and the means by which countless numbers of hospital administrators learned about the laws that so significantly defined their field of practice." In this way, Southwick was a thought leader in developing healthcare law. In addition to his intellectual leadership in the healthcare field, Southwick served on the State Health Planning Advisory Council in Michigan and played a key role in founding what has become the 12,500-member American Health Law Association.
Established by Samuel Zell and Ann Lurie in 1999 as the first entrepreneurial studies program at the University of Michigan, the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies plays a vital role in developing the next generation of entrepreneurs and venture investors. The Institute offers various programs, competitions, and academic courses that give students the knowledge, skills, and motivation to develop a growth mindset and succeed as entrepreneurs.
Since its inception, the Institute has supported more than 9,100 entrepreneurs. It provides students with hands-on experience in entrepreneurial environments where they create, lead, and shape innovative ventures.
The Institute also supports venture investing and plays a key role in connecting entrepreneurs with venture capital and grant funding. This access to funding is crucial for entrepreneurs looking to start or scale their businesses and allows Ross students to act as real venture capitalists.
The Carson Scholars Program at Michigan Ross is a signature feature of the Ross BBA Program and a result of the vision and generosity of David Carson, BBA '55. Carson, the former president of People's Savings Bank in Connecticut, was recognized by Forbes as one of the 500 most powerful people in the corporate United States. Based on his experiences throughout his career, Carson realized that future business leaders should understand how government works to develop effective corporate strategies for participating in the public policy arena. As a result, CSP enables Ross undergraduates to augment their on-campus learning with study in Washington, D.C., where they meet with elected officials, government experts, industry leaders, issue advocates, and lobbyists. Since its foundation in 2005, the program has enabled more than 1,000 alumni to learn about the public policy process from these experts.
Professor Emerita Valerie Suslow and Adjunct Professor Margaret Levenstein have pursued a collaborative research agenda on the economics of cooperative behavior among firms, with a specific focus on cartels. Agreements between competing firms to reduce the intensity of competition can include actions such as price fixing, allocating geographic markets, allocating customers, and bid-rigging at auctions. Historically, such cooperative behavior was legal throughout the world but illegal in the United States under the Sherman Act of 1890.
The U.S. National Industrial Recovery Act of the early 1930s suspended price-fixing antitrust laws in certain circumstances. In the mid-1990s, after many decades of inattention, it became clear to competition policy enforcers that cartel activity was rampant and was likely causing substantial consumer harm. This spurred new leniency and amnesty policy tools to become available to firms. In their highly cited article "What Determines Cartel Success?" Levenstein and Suslow make the case that while cartels may break up due to cheating on the agreement, the more insurmountable problems are entry and adjustments in the face of changing economic conditions. "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do: Determinants of Cartel Duration" shows that cartels that turn to price wars to punish cheaters are not stable. Highly stable cartels draw upon a vast toolkit of mechanisms to enhance their stability and, therefore, their duration and economic harm.
Levenstein and Suslow's work has been cited in policy reports by organizations around the world, such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United Nations, and the World Trade Organization. They continue to explore hidden or overlooked sources of harm to consumers that may result from cartel activity, most recently turning their attention to the role played by vertical relationships between firms engaged in horizontal collusion, as well as how collusion may be facilitated by the use of a price index in long-term contracts.
Originally developed by Professors Gretchen Spreitzer, Bob Quinn, Jane Dutton, and Laura Morgan Roberts through their research at the Center for Positive Organizations, the Reflected Best Self Exercise™ is a personal development tool that helps you to see who you are at your best, engaging you to live and work from this powerful place daily. Since its launch, the RBSE has helped thousands of executives, managers, employees, and students discover new potential. Unlike most other feedback tools, the RBSE isn't limited to self-assessment. It invites people from your life and works to share stories of moments they feel they've seen you at your best, surfacing what few of us become aware of otherwise. The RBSE enables you to gain insight into how your unique talents have positively impacted others and gives you the opportunity to further leverage your strengths at work and in life.
In the early 1990s, Professor Garry Brewer became dean of the U-M School of Natural Resources and the Environment. He approached Dean Joe White of the Michigan Business School with the concept of a dual-degree program to prepare future business leaders with an integrated education in both earth and management sciences. The concept took shape first in 1993 in the form of a graduate dual-degree program (originally called the Corporate Environmental Management Program) under the leadership of Professor Stuart Hart and then the Erb Institute after a generous grant from Fred and Barbara Erb in 1996 and a series of additional donations from other visionary donors. The dual-degree program was then incorporated into the Erb Institute and bolstered by the scholarly research of three newly endowed professorships. Nearly 30 years later, the Erb Institute has expanded dramatically to become a full-fledged, endowed institute with three chaired professors, an undergraduate Erb Fellows Program, more than 200 graduate and undergraduate students, and more than 750 alumni across 17 countries. In addition, the institute has an active agenda of scholarly and applied research and works to facilitate business engagement through business roundtables and global conference partnerships. Today, the Erb Institute is generally recognized as the leading business sustainability institute for research, teaching, and business engagement.
In 1998, Professor David Hirshleifer of the Michigan Business School, and two co-authors, published a paper titled "Investor Psychology and Security Market Under- and Overreactions." This paper has been widely recognized as the first explanation of the seemingly contradictory behavior in asset prices (under- and overreactions to different news) based on two well documented behavioral biases. The biases outlined in the paper are overconfidence (regarding the precision of one's private information) and biased self-attribution. The former leads to well documented evidence of long-term overreaction (price reversals), while the latter causes underreaction (momentum) in the medium term. This paper was the first widely recognized paper in finance based on departures from rational behavior and provided a compelling explanation for seemingly anomalous behavior in asset prices.
In her research published in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economics and Statistics, the Journal of Human Resources, Health Affairs, and other outlets, Professor Sarah Miller has used quasi-experimental methods to evaluate whether receiving improved access to health care in utero, in early childhood, and throughout childhood improves outcomes in adulthood. Miller and her co-authors have found that children who have received eligibility for health insurance through the Medicaid program have improved outcomes on a number of dimensions, both in terms of health and economic outcomes. Additionally, they found that the children of those children who had better access to healthcare in childhood were healthier at birth. This suggests a cycle in which investing in children's health today can have multigenerational benefits that allow the government to fully recoup the cost of its initial investment in the form of higher tax payments and lower spending on welfare programs. Miller's research has been discussed in numerous high-profile news outlets and has strongly impacted how academics and policymakers view investments in children. Furthermore, her papers have been cited nearly 500 times.
”Bifurcation of the Owner and Operator Analysis" was published by Professor Lynda Oswald in 1994. Her research was cited and quoted extensively by the U.S. Supreme Court in its unanimous decision in United States v. Bestfoods (1998) in clarifying parent corporations' direct and indirect liability for their subsidiaries’ actions in the context of CERCLA liability and hazardous waste cleanup. The liability of a parent corporation for the acts of the subsidiary is a complex issue that permeates all areas of corporate law and business relationships, and is not confined to the environmental context found in Bestfoods. Oswald’s research has since informed the decisions of over 55 additional courts -- federal trial and appellate courts as well as state appellate and supreme courts -- in business law contexts as varied as environmental liability, whistle-blowing under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Racketeering-Influenced Corrupt Practices Act (RICO), employment discrimination, medical malpractice, negligence, bankruptcy, and real estate transactions.
In the early 2000s, Professors Tim Fort and Cindy Schipani held the first conference on the role of business in promoting peace. The conference was attended by former Secretary of State Madeline Albright and brought together individuals from academia, business, and government to discuss efforts that could be made to reduce violence in the world. It was concluded that there is a role of business, especially in serving as an unofficial ambassador or role model when conducting business internationally. This event set in motion the beginnings of a new research paradigm on "Peace Through Commerce."
In 2002, Professor C.K. Prahalad of the Michigan Ross Business School and professor Stuart L. Hart of the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School published the iconic article "The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" in Strategy+Business. The article suggested that "low-income markets present a prodigious opportunity for the world's wealthiest companies - to seek their fortunes and bring prosperity to the aspiring poor." Prahalad published a book with the same title five years before he passed in 2010. The article and book, with additional research and publications by Prahalad, Hart, Michigan Ross Professor Ted London, and others spawned a new business strategy for human development that has transformed into a social movement around the world known as Base of the Pyramid. The movement now includes transnationals, non-profits, social entrepreneurs, grassroots development organizations, international aid agencies, and many consulting firms dedicated to BoP strategy and implementation.
Michigan Ross is known for being one of the first places to promote and provide rigorous evidence contrary to the efficient market hypothesis. The work of Professor Victor Bernard, a faculty member from 1982-1995, played a huge role in the beginnings of literature on market inefficiency. His work in valuation and fundamental analysis was the first to provide evidence that investors could not fully process information in earnings releases. The inefficient markets argument was further supported by the work of Professor Richard Sloan, a faculty member from 1997-2007. Bernard demonstrated that market participants treat the two basic components of accounting — cash and accruals — in an irrational way when making their valuation of corporate securities. This behavior became known as the "accrual anomaly." Bernard's work twice won the Notable Contribution to the Accounting Literature Award.
Launched in 2014 by Michigan Ross and the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, the Desai Accelerator is dedicated to advancing U-M alumni entrepreneurial ventures. The Accelerator provides the physical infrastructure, financial resources, and mentorship to support alumni startups as they reach the critical phase between early-stage development and the point at which they seek external investors.
At Desai Accelerator, startups can access a wide network of experienced advisors, including entrepreneurial mentors, industry experts, venture capitalists, angel investors, and other business leaders. To engage students, Desai offers internships for undergraduates and graduates from all U-M schools and colleges. The Desai Accelerator program runs an annual cohort that supports passionate entrepreneurs as they advance their early-stage ventures. Startups accepted into the program receive funding, tailored mentorship opportunities, national visibility, and other resources to support their success.
The Desai Accelerator has invested more than $1 million in 44 startup ventures on behalf of the University of Michigan and has engaged 75+ student interns. Funding and support for the Accelerator are provided by the Desai Sethi Family Foundation, the William Davidson Foundation, and the Wadhams Family Foundation.
In 2006, Professor Sue Ashford, associate dean for leadership programming, founded the Ross Leadership Initiative, which was the precursor to the Sanger Leadership Center and one of the first organized leadership programs among business schools worldwide. The initiative was influenced by Ashford's research on learning leadership via experience and Professor Noel Tichy's action-based learning concepts. Suddenly students were not just learning about leadership but were actually engaged in doing it. Prominent among these efforts was the highly influential Leadership Crisis Challenge, which puts students in the hot seat needing to resolve a crisis in the moment. This program was recognized with the Provost's Teaching Innovation Prize in 2011 and remains a prominent and popular program in the school to this day. Later, under the leadership of Professors Scott DeRue and Gretchen Spreitzer, RLI grew and launched new programs that persist today, including Story Lab, the Ross Leaders Academy, and more. In 2015, alum Stephen W. Sanger, MBA '70, and Karen Sanger made a defining gift of $20 million to establish the Sanger Leadership Center. With the Sangers' gift, the Sanger Leadership Center, now under the leadership of Professor Lindy Greer, has created an array of custom programs and workshops and now offers leadership development programs for students across the university.
The original trading floor at the Michigan Business School was established in 1999. At the time, it was the 12th academic trading lab to be developed in the United States and one of the first in a large public university.
Later, with a generous donation by John and Georgene Tozzi, a new lab was built. Over the years, thousands of students have come through the lab.
Today, there are approximately a dozen investment clubs, seven of which meet weekly in the lab. When the lab was first getting started, the student-managed fund was at $95,000, which has since grown to $700,000.