Jonathan B. Berk is the A.P. Giannini Professor of Finance at the

Stanford Graduate School of Business The Stanford Graduate School of Business is the Postgraduate education, graduate business school of Stanford University, a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California. For several years it has been the most selective ...

. He has held this position since 2008. Prior to his arrival at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

, he was the Sylvan Coleman Professor of Finance at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California), is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California, United States. Founded in 1868 and named after t ...

. He worked as an analyst for

Goldman Sachs The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ( ) is an American multinational investment bank and financial services company. Founded in 1869, Goldman Sachs is headquartered in Lower Manhattan in New York City, with regional headquarters in many internationa ...

before beginning his academic career. Berk was born on April 22, 1962, in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. He earned his BA in physics at

Rice University William Marsh Rice University, commonly referred to as Rice University, is a Private university, private research university in Houston, Houston, Texas, United States. Established in 1912, the university spans 300 acres. Rice University comp ...

in 1984. He continued to earn his MA and MPhil degrees in finance in 1989, and his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in finance in 1990, at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

. Berk is known for his theoretical research in

Corporate Finance Corporate finance is an area of finance that deals with the sources of funding, and the capital structure of businesses, the actions that managers take to increase the Value investing, value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and analy ...

, particularly in the fields of money management, asset pricing, corporate capital structure, labor and market interactions, and the theories of market rationality. He is widely published and highly cited in these areas. Berk has received numerous awards and recognitions for original work, including the Stephen A. Ross Prize in Financial Economics, the TIAA-CREF Paul A. Samuelson Award (2005) the Smith Breeden Prize (1999) Best Paper of the Year in the Review of Financial Studies, and the FAME Research Prize. Berk generated controversy in November 2024 when he published an op-ed in The Stanford Daily criticizing graduate student workers bargaining for their first contract through the Stanford Graduate Workers Union. His editorial, titled "It's hard to fathom the selfishness of our graduate students," stated that students asking for more than $53,000 in annual income were attempting to "enrich themselves by holding the University up." The San Francisco Bay Area, where Stanford University is located, has one of the highest costs of living in the world. In 2023, the California Department of Housing and Community Development classified single-person households making $96,000 as "low income" in Santa Clara County, where Stanford University is located. Due to the extremely high cost of living, single person households in Santa Clara County making less than $62,450 were classified in that same report as "very low income."

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Further reading