Michael Faulkender, Ph.D.
Michael Faulkender is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the R.H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland. Professor Faulkender received his Ph.D. in Finance in 2002 from Northwestern University, where he just finished spending a year as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance. During the intervening five years, he was at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis. Faulkender’s research focuses on empirical corporate finance, primarily in the areas of capital structure, risk management, corporate, liquidity, and executive compensation. His paper “Does the Source of Capital Affect Capital Structure” (with Mitchell Petersen) was awarded the Barclay’s Global Incestors / Michael Brennan Best Paper Award – Runner Up for 2006 (best paper published in the Review of Financial Studies) and his paper “Hedging or Market Timing? Selecting the Interest Rate Exposure of Corporate Debt” was nominated for the Brattle Prize (best corporate finance paper in the Journal of Finance). Faulkender has also been awarded a research grant from the FDIC Center for Financial Research, which was accompanied by an appointment to serve as a fellow of the center during the term of the grant. Professor Faulkender teaches the introductory finance class in the MBA program at the Smith school. He taught an equivalent course for four years at the Olin School, for which he was twice voted the recipient of the Reid Teaching Award for excellence in teaching for a core course. He has also taught advanced courses in corporate finance at the undergraduate, MBA, and Executive MBA level.