- Emeritus
Maureen O'Hara
- Professor Emeritus
Biography
Maureen O’Hara is the Purcell Professor of Finance at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, part of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. A citizen of Ireland and the United States, she holds a doctorate from Northwestern University and honorary doctorates from Facultés Universitaires Catholiques à Mons, Universität Bern and University College Dublin.
O’Hara is a leading expert in market microstructure and publishes widely on banking and financial intermediaries, law and finance, and blockchain and cryptomarkets. She is the author of numerous journal articles and several books, including Market Microstructure Theory (Blackwell, 1995), High Frequency Trading: New Realities for Traders, Markets, and Regulators (Risk Books, 2013) and Something for Nothing: Arbitrage and Ethics on Wall Street (Norton Books, 2016).
A past president of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association and the Financial Management Association, O’Hara served as executive editor of the Review of Financial Studies. She has served on multiple corporate boards, including NewStar Financial, TIAA, The Jeffrey Company and Investment Technology Group, where she was board chair. She is currently an advisor to Ava Labs, Inc., a cryptocurrency blockchain company, and BMLL Technologies, a data and analytics provider.
O’Hara has also served on regulatory and advisory groups, including the CFTC SEC Emerging Regulatory Issues Task Force (the “flash crash” committee), the Global Advisory Board of the Securities Exchange Board of India, the Advisory Board of the Office of Financial Research at the U.S. Treasury and the SEC Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee. She is a member of the Financial Advisory Roundtable of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Her recent honors include being named Quant Researcher of the Year in 2023 by the Journal of Portfolio Management, receiving the CFA Institute’s Vertin Award and being listed among Institutional Investor’s Trading Technology Top 40.
Education
PhD Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1979 MA Northwestern University, 1976 BS University Of Illinois At Urbana, Champaign, 1975
Research
- O'Hara, Maureen; Zhou, Xing. "The Electronic Evolution of Corporate Bond Dealers"Journal of Financial Economics. 140.2 (2021): 368-390
- Easley, David; Lopez de Prado, M.; O'Hara, Maureen; Zhang, Zhibai. "Microstructure in the Machine Age"Review of Financial Studies. 34.7 (2021): 3316–3363
- Huang, Shiyang; O'Hara, Maureen; Zhong, Zuo. "Innovation and Informed Trading: Evidence from Industry ETFs"Review of Financial Studies. 34.3 (2021): 1280-1316