Associate Professor | Soloman P. Lee Chair in Business Ethics
Center for Equity, Gender, and Leadership | Finance | Sustainability
About
Adair Morse is a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley. Beginning in February 2021, she is on leave from UC Berkeley to serve as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Capital Access in the Office of Domestic Finance at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.
Morse holds the Soloman P. Lee Chair in Business Ethics and is Associate Professor of Finance at the Haas School of Business. She is also a fellow at the Berkeley Center for Law and Business, and Founding Faculty Director of the Sustainable and Impact Finance Initiative. She sits on the Governance and Allocation Committee of the California Rebuilding Fund, a public-private partnership of the State of California to provide affordable small business loans. She is also an Expert Panel Member of the Norwegian Ministry of Finance, for oversight of the $1 trillion sovereign fund.
Morse’s research spans multiple areas of finance: household finance, sustainable investing, discrimination and corruption, venture capital, and pension management, with the unifying theme that she tries to choose topics useful for leveling economic playing fields. Recent work includes papers on algorithmic discrimination, small business policy during the pandemic, impact and sustainable investment, pension governance, and communication from the Federal Reserve. Her publications appear in the top economics and finance journals, and she has won a number of top finance research prizes, including the Brattle Prize, the Jensen Prize, prizes at the EFA and WFA, the Moskowitz Impact prize, among others. Many of her various works have been directly implemented into policy, including actions by the U.S. Congress, the Greek Parliament, and many state banking regulators. She holds a Ph.D. in finance from the University of Michigan.
Expertise and Research Interests
- Household Finance
- Sustainable and Impact Investing
- Entrepreneurship and Small Business
- Pension Asset Management
- Robert Bartlett, Adair Morse, Richard Stanton, and Nancy Wallace). Algorithmic Accountability: A Legal and Economic Framework. Berkeley Technology Law Journal.
Forthcoming - Brad Barber, Adair Morse, Ayako Yasuda. Impact Investing. Journal of Financial Economics.
Forthcoming - Adair Morse and Karen Pence. Technological Innovation and Discrimination in Household Finance. Palgrave-MacMillan Handbook of Technological Finance.
Forthcoming - Adair Morse, Anna Cieslak and Annette Vissing-Jorgensen. Stock Returns over the FOMC Cycle. Journal of Finance.
2018 - Adair Morse, Wei Wang and Serena Wu. Executive Lawyers: Gatekeepers or Strategic Officers. Journal of Law and Economics.
2016 - Adair Morse and Marianne Bertrand. Trickle-Down Consumption. Review of Economics and Statistics.
2016 - Adair Morse, Nikolaos Artavanis and Margarita Tsoutsoura. Measuring Income Tax Evasion using Bank Credit: Evidence from Greece. Quarterly Journal of Economics.
2016 - Adair Morse. Peer-to-Peer Crowdfunding: Information and the Potential for Disruption in Consumer Lending. Annual Review of Financial Economics.
2015 - Adair Morse, Vikram Nanda, and Amit Seru. Compensation Rigging by Powerful CEOs: A Reply and Cross-Sectional Evidence. Critical Finance Review.
2013
- Small Business Survival Capabilities and Policy Effectiveness: Evidence from Oakland
Robert Bartlett and Adair Morse - How Pervasive is Corporate Fraud?
With Alexander Dyck and Luigi Zingales
May 2020 - Consumer-Lending Discrimination in the FinTech Era
Robert Bartlett, Adair Morse, Richard Stanton, and Nancy Wallace
November 2019
At Haas since 2012
Feb. 2021 – present: Deputy Assistant Secretary of Capital Access, Office of Domestic Finance, U.S. Department of the Treasury (on leave from UC Berkeley)
2019 – present, Founding Faculty Director, Sustainable and Impact Finance (SAIF), Haas School of Business
2016 – present, Associate Professor of Finance, Haas School of Business
2013 – 2016, Assistant Professor of Finance, Haas School of Business
2012 – 2013, Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance, Haas School of Business
2012 – 2013, Associate Professor of Finance, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago
2007 – 2012, Assistant Professor of Finance, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago
- Fellow of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business, Berkeley Law School, 2018 – present
- Norwegian Ministry of Finance, Member of the Expert Panel for Oversight of the $1 trillion Norwegian Sovereign Fund
- Board Member, Governance and Allocations Committee, California Small Business Rebuilding Fund, 2020
- Faculty Research Fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research
New Zealand Finance Meeting – 2nd Best Paper
2018
RAFI Best Paper Award for ESG
2018
Runner-up
The RAFI Best Paper Award for ESG-related research, sponsored by RAFI Indices, LLC, recognizes creative and impactful research that advances the investment industry’s understanding of the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria utilized in sustainable, responsible, and impact investing strategies.
European Finance Association Prize
2012
CommonFund Best Paper relevant to Endowment and Foundation Asset Management
Journal of Financial Economics Jensen Prize for Corporate Finance and Organizations
2009
Winner of 2nd Prize
- Is the Friedman doctrine still relevant in the 21st century?, Chicago Booth Review, 05/24/2021
- People of color have a new enemy: techno-racism, The Philadelphia Tribune, 05/12/2021
- Black Homebuyers Today Pay An Unequal Price, NPR – All Things Considered, 05/07/2021
- States Try to Rescue Small Businesses as U.S. Aid Is Snarled, The New York Times, 12/10/2020
- Gov. Newsom launches rebuilding fund for small businesses, San Francisco Business Times, 11/20/2020
- New small business loan program hopes to help California rebuild, FOX2 KTVU, 11/20/2020
- Why fintech needs to tackle AI bias, The Fintech Times, 11/06/2020
- Amid pandemic, here’s what researchers have learned about the economy, Planet Money, 10/20/2020
- The false hope of reopening is killing small businesses, Vox, 09/30/2020
- ‘Most efficient vehicle’: UC Berkeley professors create California Rebuilding Fund for small businesses, Daily Californian, 09/09/2020
- Environmental, Social, And Governance: Why Corporations’ Responses To George Floyd Protests Matter, S&P Global Ratings, 07/23/2020
- Bay Area group raising $1 billion for small businesses hurt by virus, theft, curfews, Los Angeles Times, 06/05/2020
- City of Berkeley announces loan fund to support small businesses, Daily Californian, 04/18/2020
- This Is What Racism Sounds Like in the Banking Industry, New York Times, 12/11/2019
- Apple’s credit card may discriminate, just like lots of banking algorithms, Marketplace, 11/12/2019
- Bad, biased, and unethical uses of AI, The Enterprisers Project, 08/29/2019
- Can algorithms be racist? Trump’s housing department says no, Reveal, 08/05/2019
- Sustainable finance goes to business school, Wall Street journal, 06/10/2019
- Berkeley Haas’s Morse: FinTech Also Practices Housing Discrimination, Poets & Quants, 05/06/2019
- Digital mortgages are here, but some buyers are hesitant to use them. Here’s what you should know., Chicago Tribune, 01/23/2019
- Courses, Impact Investing Landscape
Sustainable Investment Fund
Impact Investing Practicum
New Venture Finance
