Alex Edmans

Early life

In his youth, Alex Edmans attended St. Paul’s School, a historic selective independent day school for boys aged 13-18, in London, United Kingdom. After graduating, he enrolled at Merton College at the University of Oxford, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Management. Edmans then spent two years working for Morgan Stanley before going on to earn a Ph.D. in the field of Financial Economics from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Career

Alex Edmans began his career by accepting an academic position with the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton Business School. He was given tenure by that institution in 2013. Later that same year, he was offered and accepted a full professorship at London Business School, where he taught finance.

Back in his home country, Edmans turned his attention to conducting deep economic research, which he pursues to this day. His overarching aim is to apply strict academic tools to investigate issues important to corporations, governments, nonprofit organizations, and other large economic stakeholders. Some topics that he has dedicated significant attention to include the role of shareholders in disciplining management, the importance of long-term vision as it pertains to executive compensation, and the effect that human emotion has on stock markets. His research has been cited more than 16,500 times in various academic works.

Edmans gave a TED talk in 2017 titled What to Trust in a Post-Truth World, which delved into the subjects of confirmation bias and the importance of evidence-based critical thinking. To date, the video of that lecture has accrued two million-plus views on YouTube.

In 2020, Cambridge University Press published Alex Edmans’ first book, Grow the Pie: How Great Companies Deliver Both Purpose and Profit. The book presents a detailed account of how purpose-driven businesses are ultimately more successful than those that are motivated simply by the accumulation of as much profit as possible. The Financial Times gave it the prestigious distinction of including it in their list of ‘Best Books of 2020’.

The following year, he was named London Business School’s ‘Professor of the Year’ by Poets&Quants, an American publication that focuses on news related to graduate-level business education.

Partnering with colleagues Richard Brealey, Stewart Myers, and Franklin Allen, in 2023, Alex Edmans co-authored the 14th edition of the reference work Principles of Corporate Finance, which is taught in universities throughout the world. Many within academia consider this legacy text to be the gold standard on the subject of corporate finance theory.

Edmans’ latest book, May Contain Lies: How Stories, Statistics, and Studies Exploit Our Biases – And What We Can Do About It is scheduled to be published by Penguin Random House in April of 2024. In it, he tackles the heady subject of misinformation in the modern world, and explains how the selective interpretation of once-trusted sources by bad-faith parties is now routinely used to obfuscate the truth. He further explains how people can resist such large-scale manipulation and make better-informed decisions about their lives.

In the past, Alex Edmans has addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, as well as given testimony before the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Among his many professional titles and positions are Director of the American Finance Association; Vice President of the Western Finance Association; Fellow, Director, and Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Financial Management Association; and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. Between the years 2017 and 2022, Alex Edmans also served as Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, Europe’s premiere academic finance journal.

Net Worth

Unknown.