2021 Academic Research Colloquium

John Beshears, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit
Harvard Business School

 

John Beshears is the Terrie F. and Bradley M. Bloom Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School, teaching the second-year MBA course "Motivation & Incentives." He is also a faculty research fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Before joining HBS, he was an assistant professor of finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Professor Beshears’s primary research area is behavioral economics, the field that combines insights from psychology and economics to explore individual decision making and market outcomes. He focuses on understanding how the financial decisions of households and firms are influenced by the institutional environment in which choices are made. In recent work, he has studied participation in retirement savings plans, household investment decisions, and health-care choices.

The National Institutes of Health, Social Security Administration, FINRA Investor Education Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation, TIAA Institute, and National Science Foundation have supported Professor Beshears’s research. His work has been published in journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Public Economics, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America; it has also been featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Time.

After earning his Ph.D. in business economics at HBS, Professor Beshears was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He received an AB in economics from Harvard University.

Marie-Hélène Broihanne, PhD
Professor of Finance and researcher
LaRGE Research Center of University of Strasbourg

 

Marie-Hélène Broihanne is full Professor of Finance and researcher at LaRGE Research Center of University of Strasbourg. Her research covers behavioral finance, with a particular focus on the behavior of individual investors and on the biological bases of risk decision-making. She has been a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Financial Markets French Regulator since 2014. Her recent work focuses on MiFID questionnaires for bank customers in Europe. She has published around thirty articles in journals such as Cognition, Finance, The Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Philosophical Transactions B, Theory and Decision, ... and various book/books chapters. She has been Associate Dean for the Master & Executive Education Programs since 2015 and head of the master’s in finance of EM Strasbourg Business School since 2010.

Wade D. Pfau
Professor of Retirement Income
The American College of Financial Services

 

Wade D. Pfau, Ph.D., CFA, RICP, is the program director of the Retirement Income Certified Professional designation and a Professor of Retirement Income at The American College of Financial Services in King of Prussia, PA. As well, he is a Principal and Director for McLean Asset Management. He holds a doctorate in economics from Princeton University and has published more than sixty peer-reviewed research articles in a wide variety of academic and practitioner journals. He hosts the Retirement Researcher website, and is a contributor to Forbes, Advisor Perspectives, Journal of Financial Planning, and an Expert Panelist for the Wall Street Journal. He is the author of the books, Safety-First Retirement Planning: An Integrated Approach for a Worry-Free Retirement, How Much Can I Spend in Retirement? A Guide to Investment-Based Retirement Income Strategies, and Reverse Mortgages: How to Use Reverse Mortgages to Secure Your Retirement.

Suzanne B. Shu
Professor of Marketing
Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management

 

Suzanne B. Shu is the John S. Dyson Professor of Marketing at Cornell University’s Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management within the SC Johnson College of Business. The types of decisions analyzed in her research include consumer self-control problems and consumption timing issues, with important implications for both negative behaviors (such as procrastination) and positive behaviors (such as saving). Her work on financial decisions has focused specifically on decumulation during retirement (annuities, Social Security claiming) as well as on perceived fairness for financial products. In the health domain, she has worked on grant-funded projects using behavioral economics to encourage hypertension medication adherence, reduce procrastination in mammogram screenings, increase adherence to weight loss programs, and promote colon cancer screenings. Professor Shu received a PhD from the University of Chicago; she also holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Masters in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University. Professor Shu has taught marketing and decision making courses to MBA students at the University of Chicago, Southern Methodist University, INSEAD, and UCLA. She is also currently an NBER Faculty Research Fellow, holds a joint faculty appointment at the UCLA Medical School, and has been a visiting scholar for several years at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau..