Craig M. Lewis, CPA

Madison S. Wigginton Chair of Management
SEC Chief Economist and Director of Risk, Strategy and Financial Innovation Division

Subject Area(s): Finance

Professor Lewis is the Finance area-coordinator and primarily teaches corporate finance. After four years, Lewis recently stepped down as Co-Director of the Law and Business Program. He is a two-time recipient of the James A. Webb Award for Excellence in Teaching (1991, 2000), Outstanding EMBA Professor (1991), and the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence (1992, 1999). Lewis' interests include equity analyst behavior, the security issue process, and corporate financial policy. His current research topics include herding by equity analysts, the relation between executive compensation and firm performance, and security issue cycles.

Lewis has published papers on the topics of the behavior of equity research analysts, information content of implied volatilities, volatility forecasting, capital structure, debt maturity structure, the interaction between debt and lease financing, earnings management, and the design and use of convertible debt. The wide range of publications in which Lewis' research has appeared includes: the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Business, and Journal of Financial Intermediation, among others. "Agency Problems, Information Asymmetries and Convertible Debt Security Design," which Professor Lewis co-authored was runner-up in the most significant paper prize at the Journal of Financial Intermediation. Another paper, "Following the Leader: A Study of Individual Analysts Earnings Forecasts" (with Rick Cooper and Theodore Day), received the Fama-DMA Prize (1st Place) for the Best Paper Published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the areas of Capital Markets and Asset Pricing in 2001.

In 2002, his prolific output earned him the Dean's Award for Research Productivity. Lewis lectured on security pricing at the Donau University in Krems, Austria in January 2004. In February, he attended the Winter Finance Conference at the University of Utah. During the winter of 2004, Lewis presented his paper, "The Determinants of Issue Cycles for Initial Public Offerings," (with Vladimir Ivanov) at the University of New Orleans and the University of Oklahoma, and in the spring he presented it at Tübingen University and Freiberg University in Germany. In June he attended the Western Finance Association Annual Meeting in Vancouver and the FMA European Conference in Zurich, where he served as session chair and discussant for two papers. Lewis currently serves as associate editor of the Journal of Corporate Finance and the Journal of Financial Research, and he serves as a referee for numerous academic journals. Professor Lewis is also a Certified Public Accountant and worked for Arthur Young & Company prior to completing his advanced degrees and joining the Owen faculty in 1986.

Education:
B.S., Accounting, The Ohio State University, 1978
M.S., Finance, University of Wisconsin, 1982
Ph.D., Finance, University of Wisconsin, 1986

Research Interest(s):
Equity analyst behavior, the security issue process, and corporate financial policy.