Professor Profiles: Luigi Zingales, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business Learning House

Professor Profiles: Luigi Zingales, The University of Chicago Booth School of Business

June 26, 2011 – 4:05 pm

Luigi Zingales (“Entrepreneurial Finance and Private Equity,” “Theory of Financial Decisions”) is known on the Chicago Booth campus for his charm, sense of humor and humility, but students with whom mbaMission spoke also call him an innovator, citing as evidence his perspective on the discount rates used to evaluate the future cash flows of new and risky ventures (i.e., his ability to mathematically explain why some firms deserve a 30%–50% discount rate). Zingales’s novel approach to solving the mortgage crisis was profiled in The Economist, and Bruce Bartlett of the National Review Online called his book Saving Capitalism from Capitalists “one of the most powerful defenses of the free market ever written.” His students call him an “emerging finance superstar”—significant praise, considering the company he keeps at Chicago Booth.

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