Atif Ellahie is an Associate Professor at the David Eccles School of Business at The University of Utah. He teaches graduate-level courses on business valuation and analysis, and mergers and acquisitions, and has received the Kenneth J. Hanni Teaching Award and the Brady Faculty Superior Teaching Award. His research focuses on two primary areas at the intersection of financial economics and accounting:

1. Examining ‘risk’ by incorporating the interaction of firm-level and macroeconomic information (e.g., earnings beta, volatility forecasting, growth risk).
2. Examining how firms and individuals respond to their institutional environment (e.g., disclosure, institutional quality, culture, policy intervention).

Atif’s research has been published in several leading academic journals in his field, including Journal of Accounting Research, Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Finance, Review of Accounting Studies, The Accounting Review, Management Science and Journal of Monetary Economics. He is an editorial board member at The Accounting Review and Review of Accounting Studies, and a frequent reviewer for other top accounting journals. Atif holds a PhD from London Business School, an MSc in International Accounting and Finance (with distinction) from London School of Economics, and an MBA from Lahore University of Management Sciences. He has also held the professional designation of Chartered Financial Analyst since 2003. More details can be found in his CV, Google Scholar profile, ORCID profile, University of Utah page, SSRN profile, and LinkedIn profile.

Prior to academia, Atif worked for ten years (1999-2009) in investment banking in New York and London. Most recently, he was an Executive Director at UBS Investment Bank advising technology, software, and services companies on corporate finance strategy, capital raisings, and mergers and acquisitions. His clients included IBM, Xerox, Motorola, Infosys and BAE Systems, among others.

When he is not busy with teaching or research, he enjoys traveling with family, cooking, cricket, cars, and taking long walks.

1. Are CEOs Rewarded for Luck? Evidence from Corporate Tax Windfalls (with Martina Andreani & Lakshmanan Shivakumar). Journal of Finance, forthcoming.

2. Accounting for Bubbles: A Discussion of Arif and Sul (2024). Journal of Accounting and Economics, in press.

3. Measuring the Quality of Mergers and Acquisitions (with Shenje Hshieh & Feng Zhang). Management Science, forthcoming.

4. Growth Matters: Disclosure and Risk Premium (with Rachel Hayes & Marlene Plumlee). The Accounting Review, 2022, 97 (4), 259–286.

5. The Role of Disclosure and Information Intermediaries in an Unregulated Capital Market: Evidence from Initial Coin Offerings (with Thomas Bourveau, Emmanuel De George & Daniele Macciocchi). Journal of Accounting Research, 2022, 60 (1), 129–167.

6. Show Me the Money! Dividend Policy in Countries with Weak Institutions (with Zachary Kaplan). Journal of Accounting Research, 2021, 59 (2), 613–655.

7. Management Forecasts of Volatility (with Xiaoxia Peng). Review of Accounting Studies, 2021, 26 (2), 620–655.

8. Earnings Beta. Review of Accounting Studies, 2021, 26 (1), 81–122.

9. Do Common Inherited Beliefs and Values Influence CEO Pay? (with Ahmed Tahoun & Irem Tuna). Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2017, 64 (2–3), 346–367.

10. Government Purchases Reloaded: Informational Insufficiency and Heterogeneity in Fiscal VARs (with Giovanni Ricco). Journal of Monetary Economics, 2017, 90 (October), 13–27.