Curriculum Vitae
Michael Ewens
Contact Information
Columbia Business School
Henry Kravis Hall, 732
665 W 130th St
New York, NY 10027 USA
Academic Positions Held
David L. and Elsie M. Dodd Professor of Finance
Columbia Business School
Prof. of Finance and Entrepreneurship
California Institute of Technology
Assoc. Prof. of Finance and Entrepreneurship
California Institute of Technology
Assistant Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship
Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University
Affiliations
Private Equity Program, Columbia Business School
Director (2026 – present); Co-director (2023 – 2026)
National Bureau of Economic Research
Research Associate
Institute for Private Capital
Private Equity Research Consortium Fellow
Millstein Center, Columbia Law School
Millstein Center Faculty Fellow
AFA Junior Faculty Mentorship Program
Co-director
AIF Global
Academic Advisory Board Member
Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association (DCIIA)
Academic Advisory Council Member, Retirement Research Center
Visiting Positions
Polsky Center Entrepreneurship Visitor
University of Chicago Booth School of Business
Visiting Professor
Yale University School of Management
Senior Research Scholar
Yale Law School
Visiting Associate Professor
Dartmouth College, Tuck School of Business
Visiting Associate Professor
UCSD Rady School of Management
Visiting Scholar
Stanford University GSB
Non-Academic Positions Held
Quantitative Advisor
Correlation Ventures, San Diego, CA
Education
Ph.D., Economics
University of California, San Diego
B.A., Economics and Mathematics
Washington University in St. Louis
Publications
"Venture Capital and Startup Agglomeration", 2025, Journal of Finance (with Jun Chen)
"Board Dynamics over the Startup Life Cycle", 2026, Journal of Finance (with Nadya Malenko)
"Founder-CEO Compensation and Selection into Venture Capital-Backed Entrepreneurship" (with Ramana Nanda and Christopher Stanton), The Journal of Finance 79.5 (2024): 3361-3405.
"Regulatory Costs of Being Public: Evidence from Bunching Estimation", 2024, Journal of Financial Economics, 153 (with Kairong Xiao and Ting Xu)
"Measuring Intangible Capital with Market Prices", (with Ryan Peters and Sean Wang) Management Science 71.1 (2024): 407-427.
"Gender and Race in Entrepreneurial Finance" (prepared for the Handbook of the Economics of Corporate Finance, Private Equity and Entrepreneurial Finance (Vol. 1), Editors Espen Eckbo, Gordon Phillips and Morten Sorensen)
"Private or Public Equity? The Evolving Entrepreneurial Finance Landscape" (with Joan Farre-Mensa) Annual Review of Financial Economics 2022 14:1, 271-293.
"Venture Capital Contracts" (with Alexander Gorbenko and Arthur Korteweg) Journal of Financial Economics 143.1 (2022):131–158.
"The Deregulation of the Private Equity Markets and the Decline in IPOs" (with Joan Farre-Mensa), Review of Financial Studies 33(12): 5463–5509. [Editor’s Choice]
"Are Early Stage Investors Biased Against Women?" (with Richard Townsend) Journal of Financial Economics 135.3 (2020):653–677.
"Cost of Experimentation and the Evolution of Venture Capital" (with Ramana Nanda and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf) Journal of Financial Economics 128.3 (2018): 422-442.
"Founder Replacement and Startup Performance" (with Matt Marx) Review of Financial Studies 31.4 (2018): 1532–1565.
"Managing Performance Signals Through Delay: Evidence from Venture Capital" (with Indraneel Chakraborty) Management Science 64.6 (2017): 2875-2900.
"Is a VC Partnership Greater than the Sum of its Partners?" (with M. Rhodes-Kropf) Journal of Finance 70.3 (2015): 1081-1114.
"Statistical Discrimination or Prejudice? A Large Sample Field Experiment" (with Bryan Tomlin and Liang Wang) Review of Economics and Statistics 96.1 (2014): 119-134.
"The Price of Diversifiable Risk in Venture Capital and Private Equity" (with Charles Jones and Matthew Rhodes-Kropf) Review of Financial Studies 26.8 (2013): 1854-1889.
Working Papers
"Liquid Claims on Illiquid Assets: The Economics of Retail Access to Private Markets", 2026 (with Jacob Faber)
"Corporate Hierarchy", 2026 (with Xavier Giroud)
"Local Journalism Under Private Equity Ownership", 2025 Revise & resubmit, Review of Financial Studies (with Arpit Gupta and Sabrina Howell)
"Irreplaceable Venture Capitalists", 2023, (with Denis Sosyura)
"Firm Age and Invention: A New Public-Access Dataset", 2024 (with Matt Marx)
Other Publications
"JCF special issue on private equity editorial," Journal of Corporate Finance, Volume 81, 2023.
"Comment on 'Venture Capital and the Transformation of Private R&D for Agriculture: A First Look.'" Economics of Research and Innovation in Agriculture. University of Chicago Press, In Press.
Cases
"SkinnyPop: Just Hot Air or a Great Investment?", Columbia Caseworks, May 2025 (Case 250315).
"Private Equity's New Frontier: The Individual Investor Market", Columbia Caseworks, June 2026 (Case 260308).
Grants and Awards
Best paper, Finance Down Under Conference, University of Melbourne
2024Best paper, 31st Utah Winter Finance conference
2022CICF Conference Best Paper Award
2021Distinguished Referee, Review of Financial Studies
2021Editor’s Choice (Review of Financial Studies)
2020National Science Foundation Grant SES-1949582
2020–2023Tuck School Outstanding Paper in VC and PE, Midwest Finance Association
2019Best Discussant Prize, ASU Sonoran Winter Finance Conference
2018Kauffman Junior Faculty Fellowship in Entrepreneurship Research
2013–14Berkman Junior Faculty Development Grant, CMU
2013Editorial Positions
Associate Editor, Management Science
2024–Associate Editor, Journal of Financial Economics
2021–Associate Editor, Journal of Corporate Finance
2021–Associate Editor, Review of Financial Studies
2022–2025Co-Editor, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy
2020–2024Guest Editor for special issue "Private Equity", Journal of Corporate Finance
2022Teaching Experience
Columbia Business School
- Private Equity Capstone (2026–, MBA elective)
- Private Equity Value Creation (2025–, MBA elective)
- Private Equity Deals (2025, MBA elective)
- Private Equity Field Study (2024–, MBA elective)
- Private Equity Finance (2024–, MBA elective)
- Private Equity Allocation (2024, MBA elective)
- Current Topics in Private Equity (2023–2024, MBA elective)
- Research in Entrepreneurial Finance (2023–, PhD)
- Entrepreneurial Finance (2024, MBA elective; 2021, 2023 MBA, co-taught with Glenn Hubbard)
National Bureau of Economic Research Entrepreneurship Bootcamp
- PhD lecture “Race and Gender in Entrepreneurial Finance”, 2023–2024.
European Finance Association
- PhD workshop “Private Equity”, 2026.
Caltech
- Corporate Finance (undergraduate), Venture Capital (undergraduate), Applied Methods for the Social Sciences (PhD), Introduction to Financial Accounting (undergraduate)
UCSD Rady School of Management
- New Venture Finance (MBA)
Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University
- Private Equity Finance (MBA), Venture Capital Finance (MBA), Entrepreneurial Finance (BA), Empirical Methods for Corporate Finance and Accounting (PhD)
Service and Activities
Organizer: Summer PhD Workshop on Entrepreneurial Finance (Imperial College, 2024; Dauphine, 2025; Nova SBE, 2026).
Co-organizer (with Emmanuel Yimfor): Columbia Private Equity Conference, 2023–present.
Co-organizer (with Camille Hebert, Song Ma and Melanie Wallskog): Workshop on Entrepreneurial Finance and Innovation (virtual), 2020–present.
Co-organizer (with Arthur Korteweg, Rick Townsend and Xinxin Wang): Southern California Private Equity Finance Conference, 2015–2022.
Private Equity Research Consortium Fellow, 2018–present.
Associate Program Chair, Western Finance Association 2019–
Session Chair: AFA (Financial Intermediation: Entrepreneurial Finance/Venture Capital) 2027, European Finance Association 2026, SFS Cavalcade (Venture Capital and Private Equity) 2026.
Carlyle/Alpinvest PERC Panel on Retail in PE, April 8, 2026.
Program Committee member: UNSW Corporate Finance Workshop 2025–, HKUST Finance Symposium 2025–, UIC Finance Conference 2024–, SFS Asia Pacific 2022–, Midwest Finance Association 2016–, European Finance Association 2018–, Washington University Corporate Finance and Financial Intermediation 2019–, SFS Cavalcade 2021–, UK Finance Conference 2021–, FOM Conference 2020–, Mitsui Finance Symposium 2023–, UIC Finance Conference 2023–, FIRS 2024–, European FMA 2025–, 2025 GSU-MS AI and FinTech conference, RCFS/RAPS Europe Conference, JCF/Renmin University "Finance at a Time of Change and Uncertainty" Conference 2026, Oklahoma Aerospace and Defense Finance Conference.
Ad-hoc referee: Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economics and Statistics, Management Science, Review of Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Urban Economics, Economic Journal, European Economic Review, Journal of Labor Economics, Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Journal of Finance and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Human Resources, Science Advances, Review of Accounting Studies, The Accounting Review.
Conferences and Invited Talks
2026–2027
Conferences and invited seminars (inc. scheduled): UBC Finance Conference, EFA, UC Berkeley Law School, USC, University of Maryland, NHH, BI Norwegian Business School (Oslo), Barcelona Conference, AFA 2027, University of Kentucky, Ivey Business School
Discussions/keynotes (inc. scheduled): AFA 2027
2025–2026
Conferences and invited seminars (inc. scheduled): Monash, ANU, UNSW, Univ. of Sydney, UTS, University of Porto, UNC Kenan-Flagler, Copenhagen Business School, AEA 2026
Discussions/keynotes (inc. scheduled): NBER Big Data in Finance (Summer Institute), 2025 Conference on Auditing and Capital Market, PCAOB Conference, NBER Corporate Finance (Winter), FRA Conference, AFA 2026
2024–2025
Conferences and invited seminars (inc. scheduled): Private Capital Markets Conference (LBS), UW Summer Finance Conference, INSEAD, HEC, SKEMA, University of Houston, EFA, Rice University, NOVA SBE, University of Georgia, University of Alberta, University of Oxford (Said), Warwick, LSE, Purdue, University of Michigan, NBER Organizational Economics
Discussions/keynotes (inc. scheduled): NBER Entrepreneurship (Summer Institute), Journal of Corporate Finance Summer Conference (Keynote)
PhD Supervision
Yuqi Zhang (Columbia Business School, 2026. Uber)
ChairJerry Shi (Columbia University, Economics, 2026. Point72)
Committee memberJeremias Huber (Columbia Business School, 2025. IFC)
ChairJun Chen (Caltech, 2019. Univ. IL, Chicago)
Co-chair