Prof. Michel Habib

Michel Habib is Professor of Finance at the University of Zurich. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he taught at the London Business School.

Professor Habib's recent work has been initial public offerings (IPO). He explores the possibility that many IPO practices may in fact be intended not so much to remedy a situation of asymmetric information between underwriter and investors as to prevent such a situation from arising in the first place. He provides a unified explanation for a very wide variety of IPO practices, such as the quiet period, last-minute pricing, the combination of overallotment, stabilization, and the Greenshoe option, and discriminatory allocations. In work on the financial crisis, Professor Habib has sought to determine whether cautious banks, those well-performing banks that had expressed some doubt as to the sustainability of high real estate prices prior to the crisis, ultimately performed better during the crisis. He finds that this was indeed the case, and that part of cautious banks' better performance can be attributed to these banks' lesser reliance on financing through repurchase agreements. Professor Habib has also worked on sovereign debt, as he has sought to determine a country's maximum debt capacity, an essential variable given the significant increases in government debt that have occurred in the wake of the financial and COVID-19 crises. In his work on political economy considerations in the transmission of central bank policy, Professor Habib has examined the role of central and local government bank ownership in China and of factionalism within the Chinese Communist Party in hastening or hindering the implementation of People's Bank of China's mortgage lending directives. Professor Habib has also studied legal systems, comparing the information production incentives provided by the differing pre-trial procedures in common and civil law systems.

• Financial Markets
  • Financial Crises
  • Information and Market Efficiency
• Corporate Finance and Governance
  • Corporate Governance and Managerial Compensation
  • Financial Valuation