Luke Taylor

Luke Taylor is the John B. Neff Professor in Finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He serves as Co-Director of the Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research and coordinates the Finance PhD Program. His research focuses on empirical corporate finance and asset management with three main themes: sustainable investing, skill in fund management, and structural estimation in corporate finance.

Dr. Taylor earned his AB from Princeton University and his MBA and PhD in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He has been at Wharton since 2008, teaching courses like Venture Capital & Finance of Innovation to undergraduate, MBA, and executive MBA students.

His research on sustainable investing examines ESG criteria and portfolio tilts toward green assets. He has developed theoretical frameworks showing how investor preferences shape asset pricing and social impact through corporate behavior. His work on active fund management reveals diseconomies of scale at both fund and industry levels, while his structural estimation research addresses executive compensation and corporate learning dynamics.

Key trends in his publications include sustainable finance, venture capital inefficiencies, mutual fund scale effects, and ESG-related market dynamics. His work frequently appears in top journals like the Journal of Finance and Journal of Financial Economics.

• Fama/DFA Prize for best paper in the Journal of Financial Economics
• AQR Insight Award for Distinguished Paper
• Jacobs Levy Center Research Paper Prize
• Moskowitz Prize

Luke Taylor actively mentors through PhD-level independent study projects (FNCE8990) and teaches empirical methods in corporate finance. His research teams collaborate on projects involving the Wharton Social Impact Initiative and Becker Friedman Institute.