About

Michelle Hanlon is the Howard W. Johnson Professor, a Professor of Accounting, and Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Her primary teaching at Sloan is the Taxes and Business Strategy class. She has received multiple awards for her teaching, including the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the MIT Sloan MBA Outstanding Teaching Award, and the MIT Teaching with Digital Technology Award. Her research primarily focuses on taxation and the intersection of taxation and financial accounting, examining topics such as corporate taxation and decision making, the effects of taxes on mergers and acquisitions, corporate tax avoidance and its reputational effects, the economic consequences of U.S. international tax policies, and book-tax conformity. Hanlon has been recognized with numerous awards for her research contributions, including the Distinguished Contribution to the Accounting Literature Award from the American Accounting Association and the Outstanding Manuscript Award from the American Taxation Association. She has served as an editor for a leading accounting research journal for fifteen years and is a coauthor of three textbooks. Hanlon has testified before the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means regarding U.S. tax policy and worked as an Academic Fellow for the U.S. House Ways and Means tax staff. She holds a BBA from Eastern Illinois University, an MAcc from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and a PhD from the University of Washington.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Accounting
• Economics
• Business
• Microeconomics
• Public relations
• Computer Science
• Engineering
• Monetary economics
• Psychology
• Finance
• Public economics
• Law
• Management

Selected publications

• Taxes and Competition: Evidence from the airline industry

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2026-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Taxes and Competition: Evidence from the Airline Industry

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Seeing Green: The Effects of Financial Exposures on Support for Climate Action

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Seeing Green: The Effects of Financial Exposures on Support for Climate Action

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Corporate Tax Shaming

  National Tax Journal · 2025-07-25 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This paper serves two purposes. First, it is a tribute to Joel Slemrod from tax accountants. Joel worked with many accounting researchers, and we honor this work. Second, we review a literature Joel helped start: the literature on the reputational costs of tax avoidance and tax shaming’s effectiveness in increasing tax compliance. We explore the evidence that consumers, employees, politicians, suppliers, or investors impose meaningful reputational costs on firms engaged in tax avoidance. We conclude that, while firms often perceive reputational risks and adjust behavior to avoid public scrutiny, the empirical evidence does not provide strong support for actual meaningful stakeholder responses.

  PublisherDOI

• Corporate Tax Shaming

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Tax Research in Accounting: A Look Forward

  The Accounting Review · 2025-10-06 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  ABSTRACT To commemorate the 100th anniversary of The Accounting Review, I was asked to provide my forecast of the future of tax research in accounting. In sum, my opinion is that the future is bright and full of opportunities for tax scholars. Governments are altering corporate income tax laws in fundamental ways and questions about how these changes affect investment, investment location, income shifting, corporate capital structure, and financial reporting will be very important aspects to study. New and newly used taxes, such as tariffs and endowment taxes, will allow for novel paths of inquiry and accountants should contribute. The use of AI by tax authorities and taxpayers could alter both tax enforcement and tax planning. The increasing access to administrative data, the use of field experiments and field studies, and employing survey methods to obtain data should expand the settings available to study and improve identification.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Editorial data

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2024-04-01

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Editorial data

  Journal of Accounting and Economics · 2024-01-30

  article
  PublisherDOI

• Limitations on Interest Deductibility and Corporate Financial Policy

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 2 citations

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Edward L. Maydew

  University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

  196 shared

• Jacob R. Thornock

  173 shared

• Terry Shevlin

  35 shared

• Lillian F. Mills

  The University of Texas at Austin

  29 shared

• Gopal V. Krishnan

  27 shared

• Joel Slemrod

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  23 shared

• Scott Dyreng

  Duke University

  20 shared

• John R. Graham

  17 shared

Awards & honors

• Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching
• MIT Sloan MBA Outstanding Teaching Award
• MIT Teaching with Digital Technology Award (2020)
• American Tax Association (ATA) Outstanding Manuscript Award…
• Presidential Scholar of the American Accounting Association…