Maureen O’Hara

Robert W. Purcell Professor of Management

Overview

Maureen O’Hara is the Robert W. Purcell Professor of Finance at the Johnson Graduate School of Management, Cornell University, and she also holds a Professorship at the University of Technology Sydney. She holds degrees from the University of Illinois (B.S. Economics), and Northwestern University (M.S. Economics and Ph.D. Finance), and Honorary Doctorates from Facultés Universitaires Catholiques à Mons (FUCAM), Belgium, Universität Bern, Switzerland, and University College Dublin.

Professor O'Hara's research focuses on issues in market microstructure, and she is the author of numerous journal articles as well as the classic book Market Microstructure Theory (Blackwell: 1995). Recent research looks at the how ETFs affect market stability, liquidity issues in corporate bond markets, and corporate governance problems in banks. Dr. O'Hara also publishes widely on a broad range of topics including banking and financial intermediaries, law and finance, experimental economics, and finance and ethics, with her book “Something for Nothing: Arbitrage and Ethics on Wall Street” published this fall (Norton:2016). Professor O’Hara has served as President of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, the Financial Management Association, the Society for Financial Studies and the International Atlantic Economic Society. She was the Executive Editor of the Review of Financial Studies, and Co-Editor of the Review of Asset Pricing Studies.

Professor O’Hara serves on the Board of Directors of NewStar Financial, a commercial finance company, and on the Board of Trustees of Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association (TIAA-CREF). She spent more than a decade on the Board of Directors of Investment Technology Group, Inc. (ITG), a global agency brokerage firm, most recently serving as Chairman of the Board. She is currently an Advisor to Symbiont IO, a fintech company focused on distributed ledger technology. She was a member of the CFTC-SEC Emerging Regulatory Issues Task Force (the “flash crash” committee), the Global Advisory Board of the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the Advisory Board of the Office of Financial Research, U.S. Treasury, and she is currently serving on the SEC Equity Market Structure Advisory Board.

She has consulted for a number of companies and organizations, including Facebook, Microsoft, Merrill Lynch, Credit Suisse, the New York Stock Exchange, Bristol-Meyers Squibb, and the World Federation of Exchanges. http://www.gsm.cornell.edu/facultybios/ohara.html

Publications

Published Papers

Working Papers

Scholarly Books

Book Chapters

  • Macey, Jonathan; O'Hara, Maureen, 2016, Vertical and Horizontal Problems in Financial Regulation and Corporate Governance, in The Future of Large, Internationally Active Banks, eds Asli Demirgüç-Kunt, Douglas D. Evanoff and George G. Kaufman, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.

  • O'Hara, Maureen, 2013, How to Prevent a Second Flash Crash, in Strengthening the Liquidity of Secondary Financial Markets, eds Richard Herring, Wharton Books.

  • Easley, David Alan; O'Hara, Maureen, 2003, Microstructure and asset pricing, in Handbook of the Economics of Finance, eds G. Constantinides, M. Harris, R. Stulz, Elsevier.

  • O'Hara, Maureen, 1998, Liquidity and Less Frequently Traded Stocks, in Equity Market Structure for Large- and Mid-Cap Stocks, eds Robert Schwartz and W. Gerke, Deutsche Borse.

  • Bloomfield, Robert J.; O'Hara, Maureen, 1998, Experimenting with Transparency, in Organization and Quality of Equity Markets, eds P. Davidoff, Paris University Press.

Image of Maureen O’Hara
447 Sage Hall
maureen.ohara@cornell.edu
607/255-3645

Education

Ph.D., Northwestern University, 1979

Departments and programs

  • Economics

Affiliated Colleges

  • College of Arts and Sciences

Links