Impact Fall 2023

Fifteen teams competed for $40K in prizes at the George Mason University School of Business Patriot Pitch Competition during the in-person April 13 event on Mason’s Fairfax Campus.

Research by Mason Accounting Professor Bret Johnson, a former SEC staff accountant and academic fellow, shows how seemingly mundane intra-agency policies can have unintended effects that benefit Wall Street over Main Street.

Jingyuan Yang, an assistant professor of information systems and operations management at Mason's School of Business, is at the forefront of AI research that aims to crack the codes of the physical world. Her results so far point toward innovative solutions for some of the biggest societal, governmental, and business challenges we face. 

Exceptions may prove the rule, but they must first be explained. That is why finance researchers are drawn to the distress anomaly-- a well-documented phenomenon that challenges the risk-return paradigm in equity markets. Generally, higher-risk investments are expected to yield higher returns than safer, more stable securities. In recent years, however, studies have shown that high-credit-risk securities for companies in distress – i.e. when their already-low credit rating is being downgraded -- realize abnormally low returns compared to non-distressed securities of the same or lower risk.  Academics have proposed a range of rationales for this puzzle. Alexander Philipov, finance area chair and associate professor at George Mason University, says they mainly fall into two categories. 

While most students were taking a break from their studies this summer, the student managers of Patriot Real Estate Funds raised $1.25 million for the second student-managed real estate investment fund at George Mason University. The Center for Real Estate Entrepreneurship (CREE) at the School of Business established the initial student-managed real estate investment fund in 2018 to provide students of the Masters in Real Estate Development (MRED) program  a unique experiential learning opportunity. With real money raised from outside investors, this is one of only a few similar programs offered at universities across the country, and allows students the chance to study, recommend, and manage investments in commercial real estate properties in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area.