Featured Researcher: Steven N. Kaplan

Steven N. Kaplan is the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a research associate in the NBER’s Corporate Finance and Public Economics programs. He is also the Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director of the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago.

Kaplan’s research focuses on corporate governance, private equity, entrepreneurial finance, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate valuation. He has extensively studied the effects of private equity investments on firm operations and employment, executive compensation, and the relationship between corporate governance and firm performance. He was elected to the Society of Fellows of the American Finance Association in 2025 in recognition of distinguished contributions to the field of finance. He delivered the keynote lecture, "Private Equity: Past, Present and Future," at the 2024 NBER Long-Term Asset Management conference and the 2012 NBER Martin Feldstein Lecture on “Executive Compensation and Corporate Governance in the US: Perceptions, Facts, and Challenges.” 

Professor Kaplan co-founded the entrepreneurship program at Booth. With his students, he helped start Booth’s business plan competition, the New Venture Challenge (NVC), which has spawned over two hundred companies. The companies have raised over $1.2 billion from investors and have created over $10 billion in market value. 

Kaplan received an AB in applied mathematics and a PhD in business economics from Harvard University. He joined the faculty of the University of Chicago in 1988. He serves on the board of directors of Morningstar, a firm that supplies data and analytic tools to the financial community.