Faculty and Research

Benjamin Esty is the Roy and Elizabeth Simmons Professor of Business Administration and Head of the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School. He is the founding faculty chairman of the General Management Program (GMP), a comprehensive leadership program designed to create outstanding business leaders. Previously, Professor Esty taught courses in the MBA program on corporate and project finance. The project finance course, called Large-Scale Investment (LSI), analyzed how firms structure, negotiate, value, and finance large capital investments such as EuroTunnel, Airbus A380, Hong Kong Disneyland, Chad-Cameroon Pipeline, and Iridium (the global satellite telecommunications firm). For this course, he created an on-line portal to help students, practitioners, and academics obtain information about project finance, infrastructure investments, and public-private partnerships (PPP). He also teaches in a variety of executive education programs and serves as the faculty chairman for the Summer Venture in Management Program (a management training program for college students designed to promote educational diversity and opportunity--see the article describing the SVMP program). Professor Esty has received the Student Association Award for teaching excellence three times in recent years, the Apgar Award for teaching innovations, and the Greenhill Award for outstanding service to the school.

His current research focuses on project and infrastructure finance, financial strategy, and leadership development. His articles have been published in a variety of academic and practitioner-oriented journals including the Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Journal of Applied Corporate Finance. In addition, he has written more than 90 case studies, technical notes, and teaching notes on project finance, financial strategy, mergers and acquisitions, emerging market investments, and valuation issues. Collectively, HBS Publishing has sold over 700,000 copies of his cases, and nine of them are currently or have been classified as HBS "bestsellers." The case studies and notes on project finance are contained in a book entitled Modern Project Finance: A Casebook (Wiley, 2004). Professor Esty is an associate editor and active referee for five academic journals: Journal of Financial Economics (JFE); Journal of Money, Credit & Banking (JMCB); Financial Management (FM); Emerging Markets Review (EMR); and Journal of Structured Finance (JSF).  He is also an Editor of the SSRN on-line journal called Financial Educator:  Courses, Cases, & Teaching Abstracts, which publicizes the newest ideas in teaching materials, approaches, and methods.

In addition to his academic research, Professor Esty has served as a consultant and led training programs for investment banks, consulting firms, government agencies, and multi-national corporations on a broad range of investment, financing, valuation, and leadership issues. In addition, he serves as an independent trustee for the Eaton Vance family of mutual funds and has served as an expert witness for litigation involving corporate finance and valuation issues.

Professor Esty received his Ph.D. in Business Economics with a concentration in finance from Harvard University; his MBA with high distinction (Baker Scholar) from Harvard Business School; and his BA degree in Economics with honors and distinction from Stanford University.