Jun Yang

Biography

Jun Yang is the Chairperson of the Finance Department, the Director of the Institute for Corporate Governance, and Conrad Prebys Professor of Finance at Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Her research focuses on corporate finance, corporate governance, executive compensation, and FinTech.

Jun’s work on opportunistic managerial behavior in compensation peer benchmarking practice was published by the Journal of Financial Economics and Review of Financial Studies (RFS). Jun’s current research investigates various factors that may affect the nature of director independence. Her most recent publication at the RFS shows that corporate donations to charities affiliated with independent directors are large and mostly undetected due to lack of formal disclosure. Affiliated donations may impair independent directors’ monitoring incentives. CEO compensation is on average 9.4% higher at firms making affiliated donations than at other firms, and it is much higher when the compensation committee chair or a large fraction of compensation committee members are involved. Furthermore, CEOs are unlikely to be replaced for poor performance when firms donate to charities affiliated with a large fraction of the board or when they donate large amounts.

Winning numerous research awards, Jun's work was featured by The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Harvard Law School Forum, and Slate. Jun received her Ph.D. in Finance from Washington University in Saint Louis, and her Master’s and Bachelor’s degrees from Tsinghua University (summa cum laude).

Areas of Research

Contracting, Corporate Finance, Corporate Governance, Executive Compensation, Fintech.