School Notes: School of Management
September/October 2011

New dean begins term

On July 1, Edward A. Snyder assumed the role of dean and William S. Beinecke Professor of Economics and Management at SOM. Snyder succeeds Sharon Oster, who will return to the SOM faculty and resume her role as a teacher and scholar. Snyder is an accomplished business school dean, having previously served in that role at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He is an economist with expertise in industrial organization and antitrust economics.

Program samples MBA experience

The Pre-MBA Leadership Program, now in its third year, brings more than 40 college students to the SOM campus each June for a taste of the first-year MBA curriculum. The initiative is aimed at developing the leadership potential of underrepresented minority students and helping them to gain a better understanding of the benefits of a management education. For two weeks the students experienced what it’s like to be an MBA student. This year, with support from Goldman Sachs Gives—a donor-advised fund available to partners and former partners of Goldman Sachs—the program included a one-day trip to Goldman Sachs headquarters in New York City, where students got an inside look at one of the world’s leading financial companies and met with the firm’s executives. Goldman Sachs personnel also hosted a résumé review session for the program’s participants.

Measuring financial risk

In a recent working paper, Gary B. Gorton, Frederick Frank Class of 1954 Professor of Management and Finance, and two collaborators propose a system for gathering and disseminating measures of risk in the economy. In “Risk Topography,” Gorton and his colleagues say that the financial crisis of 2007–08 made it clear that the current systems of national income reporting, developed in response to the Great Depression, are insufficient for understanding a financial system that includes derivatives and off–balance-sheet vehicles. They propose that the new Office of Financial Research, created by the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, collect information from financial institutions about the effects on their stability of various extreme scenarios.