People

Professor Narayanan’s current research focuses on corporate governance. In particular, his research with Nejat Seyhun has been instrumental in exposing the practice of executive option backdating. He has worked on various corporate financial topics such as corporate scope, managerial behavior, and management compensation. On corporate scope, he has written about the motives for divestitures, how conglomeration can result in inefficient capital allocation, and about the patterns of corporate diversification across various industries and over time. On managerial compensation, he has written about how various compensation schemes distort managerial decision horizons, causing, for example, managerial myopia.  Narayanan received his Ph.D. in Finance from Northwestern University. His Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees are in electrical engineering, and for several years he was employed as a senior design engineer. He has been at the University of Michigan since 1986 and was Chair of the Finance Area during 2003-09. He teaches corporate finance courses in the MBA and the Executive MBA programs and has been presented the student award for teaching excellence in the MBA and EMBA programs several times. He currently serves as the Faculty Director of the Executive MBA program.