Brian Waters

  • Associate Professor
  • Faculty Director of MS Finance
  • FINANCE
  • CENTER FOR RESEARCH ON CONSUMER FINANCIAL DECISION MAKING
Address

Koelbel - 430

Biography

 

Education

PhD, Finance, UCLA Anderson School of Management, 2015

BS, Economics and Human & Organizational Development, Vanderbilt University, 2007

Brian Waters is an Associate Professor of Finance at the Leeds School of Business at the University of Colorado. He received a Ph.D. in Finance from the UCLA Anderson School of Management as well as a B.S. in Economics and a B.S. in Human and Organizational Development from Vanderbilt University. He studies information frictions in financial markets. Past research has examined optimal contracts for impact investing, the timing of bonus pay, biases in executive hiring, and price patterns in real estate markets. Other interests include price and borrowing constraints, trading in decentralized markets, and market microstructure. 

Brian has taught Investment and Portfolio Management at the undergraduate level and Managerial Economics and Finance Theory at the graduate level.

Research

Research Areas of Interest

  • Information and learning
  • Adverse selection in financial markets
  • Optimal screening and incentive contracts
  • ESG and impact investing

Selected Publications

  • Shaun Davies, Edward Van Wesep, and Brian Waters. 2025. On the Magnification of Small Biases in Hiring. Journal of Finance, 79(5) 1737- 1785.
  • Edward Van Wesep and Brian Waters. 2022. Bonus Season: A Theory of Periodic Labor Markets and Coordinated Bonuses. Management Science, 68(7), 5464- 5492.
  • Jordan Martel, Kenneth Mirkin, and Brian Waters. 2022. Learning by Owning in a Lemons Market. Journal of Finance, 77(3), 1737- 1785.

Working Papers

  • Edward Van Wesep and Brian Waters. 2025. The Sky's the Limit: Asset Price Spirals when Margin Traders are All In.
  • Brian Waters, Xingtan Zhang, Wei Zhou, and Shrihari Santosh. 2025. Manipulating NonFundamental Information.

Teaching

Brian has taught undergraduate coursework in investment and portfolio management as well as finance theory and managerial economics at the graduate level.

Service

  • Ad Hoc Referee, Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, Review of Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Economic Theory, American Economic Journal: Microeconomics
  • Program committee member, Western Finance Association, Northern Finance Association, Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making, Colorado Finance Summit, Indiana Holden Conference in Finance and Real Estate
  • Faculty Director, Master's Program in Finance, 2024–present
  • Associate Editor, Finance and Accounting Memos, 2013–2015