Mitchell A. Petersen

About

Mitchell A. Petersen is the Glen Vasel Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University. He has published widely in finance and economics, with research focused on empirical corporate finance. His work explores how firms evaluate potential investment projects, how they fund these projects, and how they manage asset risk. His research emphasizes the impact of information costs, technology, competition, and taxes on firms' capital raising and funding decisions. Petersen has received numerous awards for his research, including the Smith-Breeden Prize and the Michael Brennan Award, and has served on the editorial boards of several prestigious finance journals. He is also a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research, has served on the board of the American Finance Association, and has been involved with Moody's Academic Advisory and Research Committee. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT and an A.B. in Economics from Princeton University. Petersen's teaching interests encompass corporate finance, valuation, capital structure, dividend policy, tax strategy, and real options.

Research topics

• Business
• Economics
• Finance
• Actuarial science
• Monetary economics

Selected publications

• Information: Hard and Soft

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2018-09-01 · 154 citations

  preprintSenior author

  Information is a fundamental component of all financial transactions and markets, but it can arrive in multiple forms.We define what is meant by hard and soft information and describe the relative advantages of each.Hard information is quantitative, easy to store and transmit in impersonal ways, and its information content is independent of its collection.As technology changes the way we collect, process, and communicate information, it changes the structure of markets, design of financial inter…

  PublisherDOI

• Loans on sale: Credit market seasonality, borrower need, and lender rents

  Journal of Financial Economics · 2016-04-30 · 59 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Understanding the Rise in Corporate Cash: Precautionary Savings or Foreign Taxes

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2017-09-01 · 11 citations

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  What has driven the dramatic rise in U.S. corporate cash? Using non-public data, we show that the run-up is not uniform across firms but is concentrated in the foreign subsidiaries of multinational firms. Standard precautionary motives explain only domestic cash holdings, not these burgeoning foreign cash balances. Falling foreign tax rates, coupled with relaxed restrictions on income shifting, are the root of the changing foreign cash patterns. Firms with intellectual property have the greatest…

  PublisherDOI

• Grupo Pao de Acucar

  Kellogg School of Management Cases · 2017-01-20 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  At the end of 2011, one of the largest food retailers in Brazil, Grupo Pão de Açúcar, or GPA (a subsidiary of Companhia Brasileira De Distribuição, or CBD), was reviewing its accounts payable terms with suppliers in search of additional value. Manager of analytics Maria Cristina Santos was examining the trade credit terms GPA had with Oalem Ltda, a family-owned melon grower located in northeastern Brazil. Oalem, like most small family businesses, was financed with bank loans and equity that was…

  PublisherDOI

• Teuer Furniture (A): Discounted Cash Flow Valuation

  Kellogg School of Management Cases · 2017-01-20 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Teuer Furniture is a privately owned, moderately sized chain of upscale home furnishing showrooms in the United States. The firm survived the economic recession and by the end of 2012, it has regained its financial footing. Now that the firm is more secure financially, some of its long-term investors have asked to cash out their investments. This will be the first time that Teuer has repurchased its equity; the company has paid dividends since 2009. Chief financial officer Jennifer Jerabek and h…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Michael W. Faulkender

  63 shared

• Raghuram G. Rajan

  Hoover Institution

  44 shared

• Janine Mukuddem-Petersen

  University of Cape Town

  31 shared

• Allen N. Berger

  University of South Carolina

  28 shared

• Jeremy C. Stein

  27 shared

• Nathan Miller

  St. Louis Children's Hospital

  26 shared

• José María Liberti

  12 shared

• I. M. Schoeman

  North-West University

  10 shared

Awards & honors

• Smith-Breeden Prize for Outstanding Paper in the Journal of…
• Michael Brennan Award for Best Paper in the Review of Financ…
• Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award (1996, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2006,…
• Kellogg Professor of the Year (2000)
• Richard J Daley Award by the Illinois Venture Capital Associ…

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