Brian Bushee

Brian Bushee is The Geoffrey T. Boisi Professor and Senior Vice Dean of Teaching and Learning at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has been a faculty member at Wharton since 2000, after previously serving as an Assistant Professor at Harvard Business School and a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. His primary academic affiliation is with the Accounting Department where he teaches MBA courses in financial reporting and disclosure analytics.

Professor Bushee received his Ph.D. in Accounting from the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business and his A.B. from Duke University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1989. His educational background provided the foundation for his distinguished career in academic accounting research and teaching.

Professor Bushee's research program focuses on the impact of information intermediaries—such as institutional investors, sell-side analysts, and the business press—on corporate disclosure decisions and on the stock market pricing of information. His work examines how different types of investors interact with corporate disclosures, how disclosure quality affects market efficiency, and how corporate managers strategically communicate with investors. He has developed influential classifications of institutional investors based on their trading horizons, investment styles, and tax sensitivity, which have been widely adopted in financial accounting research.

His research output demonstrates consistent high-quality contributions to the field, with publications spanning corporate disclosure practices, institutional investor behavior, and market efficiency. Recent work has examined managerial opportunism around investor conferences, media effects on retail investors during IPO periods, and linguistic complexity in firm disclosures, showing his continued engagement with both theoretical and practical aspects of financial reporting.

• Christian R. and Mary F. Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching at the University of Pennsylvania (2015)
• Multiple Excellence in Teaching Awards at Wharton
• Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Teaching Award (2009)
• University of Michigan Ross School of Business Ph.D. Distinguished Alumni Award (2011)
• AAA Competitive Manuscript Award (1998)

As an educator, Professor Bushee has taught the MBA introductory financial accounting course at Wharton, Harvard, and Chicago, and he also teaches in the Wharton Seminar for Business Journalists and various Executive Education programs. His commitment to innovative teaching methods and curriculum development has been recognized with the Teaching Commitment and Curricular Innovation Award. He serves as Senior Vice Dean of Teaching and Learning, where he plays a key leadership role in educational innovation at Wharton.

Professor Bushee maintains an active research program with several ongoing projects examining corporate disclosure practices and investor behavior. His Institutional Investor Classification Data website provides valuable resources for researchers studying institutional ownership patterns, with classifications spanning transient/quasi-indexer/dedicated orientation, investment style, growth style, and tax sensitivity.