Mihir Desai

Education

Ph.D., political economy, Harvard University; M.B.A., Harvard Business School

Summary of Experience

Professor Desai has more than two decades of experience in tax policy, corporate governance, international finance, and corporate finance. His research has focused on how global firms and investors finance and invest across borders, how government policies influence those decisions, and how tax policy broadly influences firms and investors. Professor Desai has filed expert reports in litigation and testified in US district courts and US Tax Court. His research has appeared in leading economics, finance, and law journals, and has been cited in media outlets such as The Economist, Businessweek, and The New York Times. His book The Wisdom of Finance was longlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award and his textbook How Finance Works has been widely adopted. Professor Desai is an award-winning teacher at Harvard Business School, and his online course Leading with Finance has been completed by more than 15,000 participants. He is on the advisory boards of the International Tax Policy Forum and the Oxford University Centre for Business Taxation. Professor Desai has consulted to companies and organizations on tax- and finance-related topics, and he has testified several times before the US Congress. He is a research associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER’s) Public Economics and Corporate Finance programs, and previously served as co-director of the NBER’s India program.

Earlier in his career, Professor Desai worked at a management consulting firm and was an analyst at CS First Boston.