David S. Scharfstein
Education
Ph.D., economics, MIT; A.B. (summa cum laude), Princeton University
Summary of Experience
Professor Scharfstein's research focuses on banking, financial distress, risk management, corporate investment, and venture capital. He teaches a course on private equity in the M.B.A. program and a Ph.D. course on corporate finance in Harvard's economics department.
Prior to joining the Harvard Business School faculty in 2003, Professor Scharfstein was for 16 years on the finance faculty of MIT's Sloan School of Management, most recently as the Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank Professor of Management and Finance. He has been editor of the RAND Journal of Economics, associate editor of the Journal of Finance and Review of Financial Studies, and director of the American Finance Association. He has received fellowships from the Sloan Foundation, Batterymarch Financial Management, and the Olin Foundation, as well as a Fulbright Scholarship to study at Oxford University. He is currently research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the Squam Lake Working Group on Financial Regulation, a nonpartisan, nonaffiliated group of 15 leading economists that offers guidance on financial regulatory reform and recently published The Squam Lake Report: Fixing the Financial System (Princeton University Press). During 2009-2010, Professor Scharfstein served as senior advisor to the Secretary of the US Treasury and on the staff of the National Economic Council.