Hemang Desai

Hemang Desai is the Distinguished Professor of Accounting and the Chair of the Accounting Department at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business. His research is inter-disciplinary and is broadly focused in the area of Capital Markets based research in Accounting and Finance. His research has addressed a wide range of topics such as analyzing the role of short sellers in capital markets, reputational consequences to managers of financial misreporting, analyzing the performance of money managers and analysts, evaluating the impact of corporate restructuring transactions such as spin-offs and mergers. His papers have been published in top academic journals in finance and accounting as well as in top practitioner journals such as Financial Analysts Journal. In addition his articles have been subject of various columns at publications such as The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s, New York Times, CFO Magazine, among others. He has twice been the recipient of the Outstanding Research Award at the Cox School of Business. He currently teaches Financial Statement Analysis in the MBA program. His prior teaching assignments include Mergers and Acquisitions and Advanced Financial Accounting. He has received the Distinguished Teaching Award and the Outstanding Teaching Award for teaching at the Cox School. He is also a recipient of the Golden Mustang Outstanding Faculty Award at SMU, which recognizes a faculty for both scholarship and teaching. He teaches in several open enrollment and custom executive education programs covering various topics related to financial reporting. Some of the custom clients include Apache, Devon Energy, GameStop, Lockheed Martin, Sewell Automotive, Texas Instruments and Trinity Rail. His consulting clients include McKinsey and Co., Entergy Corp., and Baker and McKenzie. He received his MBA from the University of New Orleans and his Ph.D from Tulane University in 1997. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Parsley Energy Inc. (NYSE:PE) and is a member of the Audit and the Compensation Committees.

Select Publications

Were the Information Intermediaries Sensitive to the Financial Statement Based Leading Indicators of Bank Distress Prior to the Financial Crisis? With Shiva Rajgopal and Jeff Yu. Forthcoming, Contemporary Accounting Research.

A First Look at Mutual Funds that use Short Sales, with Honghui Chen and Srini Krishnamurthy. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, June 2013.

Does Earnings Quality affect Information Asymmetry? Evidence from Trading Costs, with Neil Bhattacharya and Kumar Venkataraman. Contemporary Accounting Research. Summer 2013.