Stacey Kole
Clinical Professor of Economics
Biography
Stacey R. Kole is Clinical Professor of Economics. Her research interests cover policies and practices that dictate behavior within organizations and its relation to firm performance. Kole is a two-time winner of the Jensen Prize awarded by the Journal of Financial Economics for her research on corporate governance with Ken Lehn and her solo-authored work on compensation.
Kole served as deputy dean for MBA Programs at Chicago Booth from 2004-2020. She previously served as a member of the faculty and associate dean for MBA Programs at the University of Rochester's Simon School of Business. Prior to her career in academics, Kole was a financial economist in the Office of Economic Analysis, at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. She also worked at the New York Federal Reserve Bank doing country risk analysis.
Kole received a bachelor's degree in history and economics from the University of Rochester in 1982. She received her PhD in economics in 1992 from the University of Chicago.
Selected Publications
With Kenneth Lehn, "Workforce Integration and the Dissipation of Value in Mergers: The Case of USAir's Acquisition of Piedmont Aviation," Mergers and Productivity (National Bureau of Economic Research 2000).
With Kenneth Lehn, "Deregulation and the Adaptation of Governance Structure: The Case of U.S. Airlines Industry," Journal of Financial Economics (1999).
"The Complexity of Compensation Contracts," Journal of Financial Economics (1997).
For a listing of research publications, please visit the university library listing page.
Working Papers
Economics, Demography and Communication
Date Posted:Mon, 27 Nov 2000 13:23:35 -0600
This paper presents a model in which agents are distinguished by their characteristics, communication between firms and their customers plays an important role, and agents with similar characteristics communicate more effectively. The model is applied to annual data on the distribution of men and women across manufacturing and services in twelve OECD countries from 1965-93. These data display surprising regularities. The model provides an explanation for this in terms of technological change ...
Deregulation and the Adaptation of Governance Structures: The Case of the U.S. Airline Industry
Date Posted:Tue, 29 Aug 2000 03:52:16 -0500
Deregulation provides a natural experiment for examining how governance adapts to structural change in the business environment. We investigate the evolution of governance structure--ownership concentration, compensation policy, and board composition--in the U.S. airline industry during a 22- year period surrounding the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978. Consistent with theory, we find that after deregulation 1) equity ownership is more concentrated; 2) CEO pay increases; 3) stock option grants ...
Workforce Integration and the Disspiation of Value in Mergers: The Case of USAir's Acquisition of Pi...
Date Posted:Tue, 29 Aug 2000 01:44:19 -0500
In 1987, the USAir Group acquired Piedmont Aviation for $1.6 billion in a cash tender offer. Prior to the merger, comparably sized USAir and Piedmont were among the most profitable carriers in the industry. Almost immediately after the integration of the two airlines, USAir became the industry's least profitable carrier and came close to bankruptcy. This paper concludes that the major source of the value destruction in the merger was USAir's workforce integration strategy. The decision to buy ...
The Government as a Shareholder: A Case From The U.S.
Date Posted:Wed, 15 Sep 1999 13:28:36 -0500
We study a sample of U.S. corporations in which the federal government held between 35 percent and 100 percent of the outstanding common stock during and following World War II. We find that the firms experienced abnormally high turnover among corporate board members but that the tenure of senior management was relatively stable. We also find that the performance of the government-owned companies was not significantly different than private-sector firms in the same industry. We attribute this ...
Measuring Managerial Equity Ownership: A Comparison of Sources of Ownership Data
Date Posted:Thu, 18 Jun 1998 02:25:19 -0500
This paper demonstrates that differences in managerial stock ownership data cannot explain contradictory empirical evidence on the entrenchment of managers through equity. Three commonly used sources of managerial equity ownership data are described and contrasted. Value Line Investment Surveys are shown to be a relatively low-cost substitute for the beneficial ownership data for officers and directors found in corporate proxy statements.
Managerial Ownership and Firm Performance: Incentives or Rewards?
Date Posted:Tue, 10 Feb 1998 02:44:08 -0600
Managerial ownership of equity both aligns shareholder and management interests and places voting power in the hands of corporate decision-makers. The cross-sectional relation between management ownership and firm performance has been interpreted as evidence of these conflicting influences. In this paper, new evidence draws attention to the cumulation of managerial stockholdings and argue for a reversal of causality in the ownership-performance relation: firm performance is a determinant of ...
Managerial Ownership and Firm Performance: Incentives or Rewards?
Date Posted:Tue, 10 Feb 1998 02:42:29 -0600
Managerial ownership of equity both aligns shareholder and management interests and places voting power in the hands of corporate decision-makers. The cross-sectional relation between management ownership and firm performance has been interpreted as evidence of these conflicting influences. In this paper, new evidence draws attention to the cumulation of managerial stockholdings and argues for a reversal of causality in the ownership-performance relation: firm performance is a determinant of ...