DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY

Interests

Thematic Field(s):  Political and Policy History; Economic and Labor History

Principal Research Interest(s):  Finance, Economics, Policy

Biography

Carola Frydman is the Harold L. Stuart Professor of Finance and the Faculty Director of the John L. Ward Center for Family Enterprises at the Kellogg School of Management, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Frydman's research focuses on American business and financial history. Her research has focused on the role of financial intermediaries for firm growth, both during normal times and during financial crises. She has also made important contributions to our understanding of the long-run evolution of executive compensation, the skills of managers, and corporate governance. Recent projects focus, among other topics, on assessing the rise of women in business, the long-run evolution of family enterprises in America, the disparate impact that inflation has had on households across the income distribution in the twentieth century, and on the role that less regulated financial intermediaries have played on the development of the American economy. Her work has been published at journals such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, and the Journal of Economic History, and is frequently featured in main media outlets, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Economist and NPR. She currently serves as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance, and has previously served as Co-Editor of Explorations in Economic History and on the board of various other journals, including the Journal of Economic History. Prior to joining Kellogg, Professor Frydman was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the MIT Sloan School of Management (2006-2011) and an Assistant Professor of Economics at Boston University (2011-2016). She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University, and B.A. and M.A. degrees in Economics from Universidad de San Andres, Argentina.

The History Department has offered Prof. Frydman a courtesy appointment in 2023.