PHD OPEN HOUSE
November 17, 2020
Prof. Susan Broniarczyk
Associate Dean for Research
Texas McCombs is Ranked #12 Worldwide
for Business Research With 5 PhD Programs
• Accounting
• Finance
• Information Risk and Operations Management
• Management
• Marketing
PhD Open House Agenda
• Welcome Associate Dean for Research &
Dean
• Basics of PhD Business
• Hear from PhD Advisors in Each 5 Programs
• Current Student PhD Panel
WELCOME FROM DEAN
Prof. Lillian Mills
Why PhD McCombs Business?
• Rigorous & Relevant Research that Impacts Business and Policy
• Small Programs Utilize Apprenticeship Model: 1 PhD Student:1 Research Active Faculty
• Flexibility to Work with Multiple Faculty in Department
• Fully Support Our PhD Students for 5 Years
• 20 hour TA/RA position Fall, Spring, & Summer: $18,000 Compensation + Insurance + Tuition Waiver
• Additional Fellowships: $5,000- $23,000
• Excellent Academic Placement in Attractive Faculty Positions
• Starting Salary: $150,00 - $230,000
McCombs PhD Placement
2018
• U of Minn
• Ohio State
• Cornell
• Georgia State
• Temple
• McGill
• Nanyang Tech
• Syracuse
2019
• Ohio State
• 2 Texas A&M
• Nat. Univ. of Singapore
• City Univ. Hong Kong
• HEC France
• U of Georgia
• U of Arizona
• UC-Berkeley Post-Doc
2020
• USC
• Purdue
• NUS
• Michigan State
• U of Pittsburgh
• UTSA
• HEC Paris
• Indian Bus. School
• McGill
• Facebook
Recent Dissertations
• Shannon Garavagalia (Accounting): What’s in a name? Investors’
reactions to non-GAAP labels
• Erica Jiang (Finance): Financing Competitors’ Essays on Shadow
Banks’ Funding
• Xiaofan Li (IROM): The Economics of Cyber Crime
• Andrea Marquez (Management): Guiding Entrepreneurial Odyssey:
How Mentors Impact Strategy Formation in Nascent Ventures
• Frank Zheng (Marketing): Consumer Behavior in a Digital
Environment with Superficial Information Processing
Courtesy PhDProject
PhD McCombs Admission
• Small Programs Admit 3-4 Students Per Year
• Open to All Academic Backgrounds Demonstrating Research Ability
• Business Degree NOT Required Masters Degree NOT Required
• Program: Year 1-2: Coursework + Research; Years 3-5: Dissertation + Other
Research
• Application Deadlines
• December 15: Accounting, IROM, Management, Marketing January 15: Finance
Admission: Frequently Asked Questions
▪ Is the GRE/GMAT a requirement?
▪ Yes, the GRE or GMAT is a requirement for admissions. However, if you do not have
a valid GRE or GMAT score due to COVID-19 related reasons, one can obtain a
waiver by uploading and submitting a brief statement to that effect as a separate
document in your application.
▪ What funding is available?
▪ Funding packages are offered to individuals admitted to our programs, and their
offer includes a fellowship award and a 20-hour/week work appointment. With this
appointment, students qualify for in-state tuition rates, discounts on tuition, and
employee health insurance. Specific funding packages are discussed with individuals
when an offer of admission is made.
▪ Is the TOEFL/IELTS a requirement for international applicants?
▪ Yes, the TOEFL or IELTS is required for all international applicants. This requirement
can only be waived if the applicant is originally from a country where English is the
official language or if they received a Bachelor’s degree in the US or in a country
where English is the official language.
Admission: Frequently Asked Questions
▪ Is this a full time program? Can I study remotely?
▪ All PhD programs in the McCombs School of Business are full time only programs
and students are expected to live and work in Austin during their program.
▪ Can the application fee be waived?
▪ The application fee cannot be waived by the school. These fees are set by the
University. For more information about the application fee and if waivers are
available from the University, please contact the Graduate and International
Admissions Center (GIAC).
▪ I have questions about a specific PhD program in McCombs.
▪ Please contact the PhD Coordinator from that program.
▪ www.mccombs.utexas.edu/PhD/Contact%20Us
▪ Need More Information?
▪ The Graduate School: www.gradschool.utexas.edu/admissions/how-to-apply
▪ Graduate and International Admissions Center:
www.gradschool.utexas.edu/admissions/contact
▪ Texas McCombs PhD: www.mccombs.utexas.edu/PhD/Admissions
PhD Graduate Advisors
Lisa
Koonce
Accounting
Aydogan
Alti
Finance
Jason
Duan
Marketing
Sirkka
Jarvenpaa
IROM
Francisco
Polidoro
Management
PHD IN ACCOUNTING
PhD Advisor – Prof. Lisa Koonce
PhD Coordinator – Leticia Sheffield
RESEARCH TOPICS
Urooj Khan
• Sharp discontinuity around zero for levels of earnings
and changes in earnings (compared to last year).
• Firms are more likely to make a penny a share than to
lose a penny a share or exceed last year’s earnings
by a penny than to miss by a penny
Financial Archival Research
PHD IN FINANCE
PhD Advisor – Prof. Aydogan Alti
PhD Coordinator – Robyn Lynch
• FINANCE IN PRACTICE
− Financial services account for a large and growing part of economic activity (close to 10% of
GDP according to recent estimates)
− Affects virtually every corner of the economy: Households, corporations, small businesses,
public sector,…
• FINANCE AS A RESEARCH DISCIPLINE
− Focuses on optimal allocation of risk and capital
− An applied branch of economics, similar research questions and methodologies
− Close professional ties between economics and finance academia (similar training,
publication outlets, conferences, etc.)
• RESEARCH AREAS
− ASSET PRICING: Market Efficiency, Risk and Return, Derivative Pricing
− CORPORATE FINANCE: Capital Structure, Corporate Investment, Corporate Governance
• Emphasis on an integrated perspective: Financial markets coordinate the actions
of investors and corporations
− OTHER: Macro-Finance, Banks and other Financial Institutions, Household Finance, Market Design
• METHODOLOGIES
− Theoretical modelling
− Empirical studies with field data
− Quantitative modelling
− Other: Experimental data, surveys
SOME EXAMPLES OF
RECENT RESEARCH TOPICS
− Large group of researchers, active
in every field of finance
− Several thought leaders in their
fields (journal editors, association
presidents etc.)
− Financial Crises: Government
Bailouts, Banking Regulation,
Mortgage Markets
− Fin-Tech: Online lending
platforms, role of technology in
investing, Crypto-Currencies
− Finance and the New Economy:
Globalization, Automation, the Gig
Economy, Inequality
FINANCE FACULTY AT
MCCOMBS
PHD IN INFORMATION,
RISK, & OPERATIONS
MANAGEMENT (IROM)
Sirkka Jarvenpaa
PhD Advisor – IROM Department
Alana Lipham
PhD Coordinator – IROM Department
Decision Science Research Areas
Methodology
Applications
• Data-Driven Optimization
• Robust Optimization
• Decision Analysis
• Multi-attribute Utility
Theory
• Dynamic Programming
• Stochastic Control
• Machine Learning
• Deep Leaning
• Online Learning
• Reinforcement
Learning
• Statistical Network Models
• Data Envelopment Analysis
• Business Analytics
• Quantitative Finance
• Computational Finance
• Portfolio Optimization
• Valuation in incomplete
markets
• Behavioral Finance
• Online learning
• Revenue Management
• Social Media Analytics
• Financial Regulation and
Stability
For more information contact
Professor Muthuraman:
kumar.muthuraman@mccombs.utexas.edu
• Insurance and Risk Management
• Energy Markets
• Real Estate
• Healthcare and Biomedicine
• Real options
• Risk Propagations in Supply Chain
Information Systems Research Areas
Social Media Analytics
Health IT & Analytics
Emerging
Technologies
• Economics of social networks and digitization
• Information diffusion in social networks
• Machine learning and causality methods
• Social peer influence and productivity
• Social and mobile advertising
• User-generated content analytics and organizational
business value
• User sentiment mining for applications
• Social network inference and interventions
• Economic analysis of cloud computing
• Bitcoin and blockchain impacts
• Digital innovation, transformation and commercialization
• Ecosystems, platform design, strategy and business value
• Machine learning for decision support
• Algorithmic fairness and accountability
• Autonomous driving and IoT monitoring
• Outsourcing and Partnerships
• Integration of mhealth and EMR data
• Impact of health IT on patient-provider
engagement and health outcomes
• Predictive analytics models
• Impact of health IT on value-based care
performance
• Online reviews and provider analytics
• Incentive and market design
Privacy, Security, etc
• Cybersecurity and risk analytics
• Development and application of AI and
machine learning applications
• Behavioral economics and information
systems applications (contracting,
platform design, fake news, etc.)
For more information,
contact Prof. Sirkka
Jarvenpaa,
Sirkka.jarvenpaa@mccombs
.utexas.edu
Operations Management
Central question in OM: How to allocate resources and coordinate activities to
effectively meet customer needs for products and services
Decisions
• Capacity planning
• Inventory mgt.
• Scheduling, Coordination
• Product dev, Process impr.
• Pricing
• Mkt/Fin/IS interface …
Application
Contexts
• Manufacturing
• Logistics, Transport.
• Retailing
• Healthcare
• Sharing Economy
• Technology, Services
Models &
Methods
• Analytical, Economic
• Optimization
• Stochastic, Simulation
• Statistical, Empirical
• Game theory
• Behavioral …
OM
Research
• Excellence in OM is key to business
success: e.g., Amazon, WalMart, Toyota,
Cleveland Clinic, Uber, ….
• OM @ McCombs:
• Ten tenure-track faculty members from
top universities. Diverse domain
interests and research expertise
• Develop and apply math. and data-
driven models to provide strategic
insights and support managerial
decisions. Rigorous + relevant
• Research characterized by: Decisions
being addressed; Models & Methods
used; Application Context
For more information, contact Prof.
Guoming Lai at
Guoming.Lai@mccombs.utexas.edu
Research areas:
Applied statistics
Bayesian inference
Bayesian nonparametrics
Causal inference and policy analysis
Data sciences
Deep probabilistic models
Hierarchical Bayesian models
Insurance and financial statistics
Machine learning
Statistical theory and methodology
IROM Statistics Research Group
Carlos
Carvalho
Jared
Murray
Tom
Sager
James
Scott
Tom
Shively
Magdalena
Bennett
Mingyuan
Zhou
For more information, contact Prof Zhou
[email protected]xas.edu
PHD IN MANAGEMENT
PhD Advisor – Prof. Francisco Polidoro Jr.
PhD Coordinator – Kristen Bond
✓ Individuals and groups
✓ Creativity
✓ Human capital
✓ Team dynamics
✓ Ethical dilemmas
✓ Organizational identity
✓ Organizational culture
Organizational
behavior
✓ Performance
differences across
firms
✓ Competitive strategy
✓ Collaborative strategy
✓ Technology,
innovation, and
entrepreneurship
✓ Innovation platforms
and ecosystems
Strategic
management
PhD in Management:
Two Major Areas of Study, Many Topics
Individuals
– groups
– organization
- environment
Unit of analysis
PhD in Management:
Our graduates’ achievements
✓ Placement in top research-oriented schools.
✓ Award-winning research.
✓ Productive scholars, publishing regularly in top-tier
management outlets.
✓ Intellectual leaders in the field (e.g., editors, editorial review
board members, conference panelists).
PhD in Management:
Exciting opportunities for you to explore
✓ New forms of organizing (e.g., ecosystems, crowdsourcing, open innovation).
✓ Outcomes geared toward progress (e.g., corporate social responsibility, social
entrepreneurship, gender parity, social equality, climate change).
✓ Organizational learning and organizational resilience in the face of the
imponderable (e.g., pandemics).
✓ Impact of technologies on organizations and work environment (e.g., virtual
workplace, AI in legal and medical profession).
✓ New research tools (e.g., big data, machine learning, natural experiments).
✓ ________________ (your dissertation here!).
PHD IN MARKETING
PhD Advisor – Prof. Jason Duan
PhD Coordinator –Susannah Raulino
Marketing Research Areas
Consumer Behavior
Marketing Strategy
• Substantive marketing strategic issues
in multiple perspectives
• Marketing theory development
• Empirical testing of marketing strategies
• Research based on consumer
psychology
• Lab and field experiments
• Interaction with subject pools
Quantitative Marketing
• Develop and apply novel
quantitative methods
• Economic theory and statistical
methods
• Data and computationally intensive
Research Topics in the Areas
Consumer Behavior
Marketing Strategy
• Marketing activity and corporate financial
market performance
• Corporate social responsibility
• Culture influence, branding and promotion
• Consumer response to word of mouth
• Consumer motivation, goal process
• Interpersonal relationship between
consumers and marketing
• Social and psychological influence in
donation and crowdfunding
• Consumer financial responsibility
Quantitative Marketing
• Identify forward-looking behavior: e.g.,
stockpiling, data plan
• Social media content analysis
• Incentives and management of sales force
• Dynamic management of crowdfunding
PhD's in Marketing
❖ Pioneer marketing concepts and research
❖ Create greater and positive social impact of marketing
❖ Become professors or scholars in marketing research
❖ Publish in the top peer-reviewed marketing journals
Additional Sources of Information
• Texas McCombs PhD Website:
https://www.mccombs.utexas.edu/phd
• PhD Project: https://www.phdproject.org/
– Goal is to Promote Diversity in Academia
– GREAT Resource Materials for All on Business PhD
• PREDOC: https://predoc.org/
– Research Associate Positions in Finance and Economics for
Undergraduate and Masters Degrees
– Pathway to PhD
Diversity at McCombs
Professor Raji Srinivasan
Association Dean, D & I
Professor Michael Clement
PhD Project Hall of Fame
CURRENT PHD STUDENT
PANEL
ACC Jesse Chan
FIN Tim Park
IROM Julius Barth
MAN Wonbin Sohn
MKT Robina Ghosh
