Amy Dittmar is an Assoicate Professor (with tenure) at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.  Before arriving at Michigan in 2003, she was an Assistant Professor at Indiana University.  She received her PhD in Finance from the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina in 2000.  She also holds a B.S. in Finance and Business Economics from Indiana University.  Amy has worked at First Chicago (now JP Morgan Chase) as a Financial Analyst and Real Estate Officer.  She has also done consulting for Securities Education Institute and American Council for Capital Formation.

Amy’s research empirically examines corporate financial decision making.  Her recent research investigates the choice between private and public ownership by examining why firms go private.  She also has a recent paper investigating the impact of misvaluation on aggregate stock repurchases.  Over her career, Amy has studied payout and cash policy, capital structure decisions, the relation between financing and investment decisions, competition in mergers and acquisitions, and the impact of governance on corporate policy and performance.  Her research has won the LECG Award for Best Paper in Corporate Finance at European Finance Association Conference and been a finalist for the Brattle Prize for best paper in corporate finance in the Journal of Finance.  Her work is published in all of the major finance journal: the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Business, and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and is reprinted in Recent Developments in Corporate Finance.

Selected Publications

Why do firms use private equity to opt out of public markets, (with Sreedhar Bharath), 2009,  Review of Financial Studies forthcoming.

The Timing of Financing Decisions: An Examination of the Correlation in Financing Waves (with Robert Dittmar), 2008, Journal of Financial Economics 90, 59-83.

Corporate Cash Policy and How to Manage it with Stock Repurchases, 2008, Journal of Applied Corporate Finance 20 (3).

Corporate Governance and the Value of Cash Holdings (with Jan Mahrt-Smith), 2007, Journal of Financial Economics 83, 599-634.

Why Do Firms Issue Equity? (with Anjan Thakor), 2007, Journal of Finance 62, 1-54.

Corporate Governance, Incentives, and Industry Consolidations (with Keith Brown and Henri Servaes), 2005 Review of Financial Studies 18, 1.

Capital Structure in Corporate Spin-offs, 2004, Journal of Business 77, 9-43.

Divestitures and Divisional Investment Policies (with Anil Shivdasani), 2003, Journal of Finance 58, 2711-2743

International Corporate Governance and Corporate Cash Holdings (with Jan Mahrt-Smith and Henri Servaes), 2003 Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 38, 111-134

Why do Firms Repurchase Stock?, 2000, Journal of Business 73, 331 – 355 (reprinted in Recent Development in Corporate Finance)