Research Topics

The School of Business encourages and fosters a rich research-oriented environment for faculty and doctoral candidates. Students can choose from a variety of topics reflecting the varied research interests of our faculty. The Ph.D. Program is intended to prepare students to conduct original research; i.e., to explain phenomena previously not well understood and then to test proposed explanations empirically.

Accounting

  • Accounting standards-setting
  • Analyst forecasts
  • Auditing
  • Corporate financial reporting issues
  • Initial Public offerings
  • Internal control
  • Mergers and acquisitions
  • Securities regulation in international capital markets
  • Taxes and business decisions
  • Tax policy

Finance

  • Asset pricing models
  • Corporate management behavior
  • Risk management
  • Corporate governance
  • Financial distress and default
  • Credit risk
  • International finance
  • Macro finance
  • Real options
  • Institutional investors
  • Mutual funds
  • Hedge funds
  • Market efficiency
  • Cost of capital
  • Bank competition
  • Culture and finance
  • Environmental impacts on real estate value
  • Capital structure
  • Dividend policy
  • Insurance markets
  • Healthcare finance

Management

  • Teams in organizations
  • Empowerment and empowering leadership
  • Social networks
  • Multi-level theory
  • Strategic entrepreneurship
  • Corporate alliance and networks
  • Learning process
  • Mergers and acquisitions
  • Creativity and innovation
  • Strategic human resource management
  • International expansion
  • Long-term decision making

Marketing

  • Big data anlytics, Branding in developed and emerging markets
  • Cross-cultural research
  • Cognitive computing applications
  • Consumer search and decision  making
  • Consumer social networks and social media
  • Creativity, identity and emotions
  • Digital marketing and analytics
  • Digital strategies for customer relationship management
  • E-commerce and online retailing
  • Global citizenship and consumer behavior
  • International marketing
  • Interpersonal social networks and social capital
  • Marketing-finance interface
  • Mobile and digital marketing
  • Sales management and innovation
  • Product design
  • Social interaction and peer effects
  • Quality and innovation

Operations & Information Management

  • Auction theory and applications
  • Database design and security
  • Database management
  • Distributed computing and client/server technology
  • Electronic commerce
  • Economics of information and information systems
  • Healthcare information systems
  • Management of technology
  • Manufacturing systems, planning and strategy
  • Supply chain management
  • Telecommunication and network modeling and analysis
  • Applications of operations research and other optimization techniques to areas such as product design, production scheduling, and facility location