Biographical note

Jonathan Berk is the Harold Furst Associate Professor of Management Philosophy and Values at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his BA in physics from Rice University in 1984, his MA and MPhil in finance from Yale University in 1989, and his PhD in finance from Yale in 1990. He has broad research interests in finance, including asset pricing, corporate valuation, mutual funds, corporate investment, individual decision making, and labor market discrimination. His research has won numerous awards, including the Smith Breeden Prize, the BGI Michael Brennan Award, and the Graham and Dodd Award of Excellence. He has taught both the undergraduate and MBA Corporate Finance courses at Berkeley and also teaches Financial Decision Making and Real Options.

Peter DeMarzo is Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and twice received the outstanding teaching award from students in the school's Sloan Management Program. He earned his BA in cognitive science and applied mathematics from the University of California, San Diego, in 1984, his MS in operations research from Stanford in 1985, and his PhD in economics from Stanford in 1989. In addition to his experience at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, he has taught at the Haas School of Business and the Kellogg Graduate School of Management. His research interests include security design, contract theory, corporate financial policy, asymmetric information and trade, and general equilibrium theory. He currently teaches MBA and PhD courses in Corporate Finance and Derivative Securities Markets.