Ayako Yasuda

Education

Ph.D., economics, Stanford University

Summary of Experience

Professor Yasuda is an applied financial economist whose research focuses on venture capital; private equity; impact funds; environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues; social entrepreneurship; and long-horizon institutional investors. She is particularly interested in the intersection between the responsible investment movement and the private equity industry. In addition to coauthoring the book Venture Capital and the Finance of Innovation, Professor Yasuda has contributed several book chapters and presented widely at conferences. Her research has appeared in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance, and The Review of Financial Studies, and she has written on entrepreneurship, private equity, and venture capital for news publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, the Nikkei, the Financial Times, and The New York Times. Professor Yasuda serves as associate editor of The Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Accountability in a Sustainable World Quarterly, and the Journal of Financial Intermediation. Her pioneering 2021 article “Impact Investing” (published in the Journal of Financial Economics) won the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University’s Moskowitz Prize for outstanding research on sustainable and responsible investing, and was a runner-up for the RAFI Best Paper Award for ESG-related research. Professor Yasuda is an advisory board member of the Bureau of Entrepreneurial Finance, which aims to advance and disseminate scientific research on venture financing. Before joining the faculty of UC Davis, she taught at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and earlier in her career, she was a financial analyst at Goldman Sachs.