Scholarly Journal Honors Ross Professor’s Dissertation with Top Award

Michigan Ross Professor Derek Harmon has won a prestigious award from the journal Administrative Science Quarterly.

Harmon won the ASQ Dissertation Award, an annual honor for the best paper published in the journal based on a dissertation. Harmon’s paper is  “When the Fed Speaks: Arguments, Emotions, and the Microfoundations of Institutions,” which was published in September 2019.

The paper analyzes the effects of speeches made by the chair of the Federal Reserve — finding that efforts to bolster confidence by reinforcing commonly shared assumptions can sometimes have the opposite effect, creating uncertainty in financial markets.

Harmon is an assistant professor of strategy at Ross. He holds a PhD from the University of Southern California and a BA from the University of St. Thomas.

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