Praveen Kumar

Professor - Cullen Distinguished Chair and Professor

Praveen Kumar is the Cullen Distinguished Chaired Professor of Finance, Chairperson of the Department of Finance, and Executive Director of the UH Global Energy Management Institute (GEMI) at the C.T. Bauer College of Business at the University of Houston. Professor Kumar received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and his A.B. and M.P.A. from Princeton University. Prior to joining the UH faculty, Dr. Kumar served on the faculty of the Graduate School of Industrial Administration at Carnegie Mellon University.

He is the recipient of:

• University of Houston Excellence Award for Research and Scholarship
• University of Houston Teaching Excellence Award

Dr. Kumar's research interests focus on the role of information in financial markets, corporate finance and governance, financial market microstructure, energy finance and risk-management, and industrial organization. His research has been widely published in the top scholarly journals in finance, economics and management, such as the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, American Economic Review, Journal of Accounting Research, Management Science, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Strategic Management Journal and the Journal of Monetary Economics. It has also been discussed in major business publications like BusinessWeek, the Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times.

He has received numerous awards for his research such as the Chicago Board of Trade Awards for the Best Paper in Options and Futures by the Western Finance Association and the McGraw-Hill Award for the Best Finance Paper by the Association of Business Disciplines. Dr. Kumar also serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Corporate Governance: An International Review, a leading interdisciplinary and international journal of corporate governance.

Dr. Kumar has taken a leading role in the establishment of the Global Energy Management Institute at the Bauer College of Business. He is an expert in the evaluation and financing of energy projects, especially in the valuation of embedded options, and in the analysis of industry structure and competitive advantage in the oil and gas industry. Most recently his research in energy finance has focused on the valuation of and risk-management approaches to the development of unconventional sources in oil and gas. He is a co-developer of one of the first graduate courses on the practice and future of carbon and emissions trading to be offered in business schools. He has also lectured for top executives in major energy corporations and consulted with leading investment banks, international lending institutions such as the World Bank, and regulatory agencies such as the CFTC.

Research Interests

• Analyses of the Impact of Asymmetric Information on Asset Pricing
• Corporate Financial Policies and Governance
• Market Microstructure
• Incentives and Strategy Design in Organizations
• Industrial Organization

Areas of Expertise

• Corporate Finance
• Real Options
• Investments
• Industrial Organization
• Contract Theory

Publications

• Estimation Risk, Information, and the Conditional CAPM: Theory and Evidence, (with S. Sorescu, R. D. Boehme, and B. Danielsen), Review of Financial Studies, 2008 (Lead Article).
• Corporate Fraud and Investment Distortions in Efficient Capital Markets, (with N. Langberg), Rand Journal of Economics, 2008.
• Who Monitors the Monitor? The Effect of Board Independence on Executive Compensation and Firm Value, (with K. Sivaramakrishnan), Review of Financial Studies, 2008.
• Optimal Patenting and Licensing of Financial Innovations, (with S. Turnbull), Management Science, 2008.
• Takeovers, Market Monitoring, and International Corporate Governance, (with L. Ramchand), December 2007, Rand Journal of Economics, 2008.
• Agency Costs and Corporate Investment: The Role of Executive Compensation and Corporate Governance," (with S. Kang and H. Lee), Journal of Business,2006.
• Intertemporal Price-Quality Competition and the Coase Conjecture, Journal of Mathematical Economics, 2006.
• Managerial Entrenchment and Payout Policy, (with A. Hu), Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2004.

Education

Ph.D. 
Stanford University 
MPA
Princeton University