Professor Michelle Lowry

Michelle is the TD Bank Professor of Finance at the LeBow School of Business, Drexel University, and the Academic Director of the Gupta Governance Institute at the University, which includes both the Center for Corporate Governance and the Center for Nonprofit Governance. She received her PhD from the University of Rochester, and was previously a professor at Penn State University. In addition, she is a past visiting professor at HEC, the Wharton School, and INSEAD. She is an editor of the Review of Corporate Finance Studies, and a a past associate editor of the Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies. She is a founding member of AFFECT (Academic Female Finance Committee), which strives for gender equality among the field of finance academics. She won the Denis Gromb Award for outstanding citizenship in financial economics, in recognition for the founding of AFFECT.

Her research focuses on a variety of issues in empirical corporate finance, including corporate governance, initial public offerings, regulations, and politics. She is particularly interested in the ways that companies’ corporate governance affects their performance around specific corporate events. Her research has been published in top finance journals, including the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Finance. Her research also relates to the effects of policy on firm outcomes, in particular regulation related to firm governance and shareholder voting. In this vein, she participated in an SEC panel on shareholder voting. Finally, her research has also attracted attention in the popular press, with cites in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NPR's Morning Edition, and Forbes. She is the winner of the 2021 Jensen Prize, for Best Paper published in The Journal of Financial Economics in the areas of Corporate Finance and Organization, and winner of the 2025 Brattle prize (Distinguished paper) for paper published in The Journal of Finance in the area of Corporate Finance.