Lesson 8: Considering an Author’s Credibility | Alex Edmans

In a famous scene in The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy pulls back the curtain to reveal the ordinary man behind the grand illusion of “The Great Oz.” It’s a dramatic moment that highlights the lengths some leaders will go to maintain their power and mystique.

When evaluating research, Professor Alex Edmans teaches us to do something similar — to pull back the curtain on authors to see who they really are. Are they credible experts, or is there something else at play? In this video lesson, he shares ways to uncover an author’s expertise and intentions, guarding against being deceived by a façade.

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About Alex Edmans:

Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School. Alex graduated from Oxford University and then worked for Morgan Stanley in investment banking (London) and fixed income sales and trading (New York). After a PhD in Finance from MIT Sloan as a Fulbright Scholar, he joined Wharton in 2007 and was tenured in 2013 shortly before moving to LBS.

Alex’s research interests are in corporate finance, responsible business and behavioural finance. He is a Director of the American Finance Association; Vice President of the Western Finance Association; Fellow, Director, and Chair of the Ethics Committee of the Financial Management Association; Fellow of the British Academy; and Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. From 2017-2022 he was Managing Editor of the Review of Finance, the leading academic finance journal in Europe.

Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, presented to the World Bank Board of Directors as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series, and given the TED talk What to Trust in a Post-Truth World and the TEDx talks The Pie-Growing Mindset and The Social Responsibility of Business with a combined 2.8 million views. He has written for the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Harvard Business Review and World Economic Forum and been interviewed by Bloomberg, BBC, CNBC, CNN, ESPN, Fox, ITV, NPR, Reuters, Sky News, and Sky Sports.