Rate My Professor Nick Bollen

Nicolas P.B. Bollen, known as Nick Bollen, holds the Frank K. Houston Chair in Finance and serves as Professor of Finance at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management, where he has been on the faculty since 2001. Initially appointed as Assistant Professor from 2001 to 2005, he advanced to Associate Professor from 2005 to 2010 before becoming full Professor in 2010. Prior to joining Vanderbilt, Bollen was an Assistant Professor at the David Eccles School of Business, University of Utah, from 1997 to 2001. His academic background includes a Ph.D. in Finance and an M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, earned in 1997 and 1993, respectively, as well as a B.A. in Physics with a minor in Economics from Cornell University in 1988.

A leading expert on hedge funds and mutual funds, Bollen's research examines time-variation in risk exposures, return reporting practices, suspicious patterns indicative of fraud, and behavioral influences in investing. He is a prolific publisher with over 20 papers in premier journals including the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, and Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis since joining Owen. Notable publications include 'Suspicious Patterns in Hedge Fund Returns and the Risk of Fraud' with V.K. Pool (Review of Financial Studies, 2012), 'Do Hedge Fund Managers Misreport Returns? Evidence from the Pooled Distribution' with V.K. Pool (Journal of Finance, 2009), 'Zero-R² Hedge Funds and Market Neutrality' (Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2013), 'Hedge Fund Performance: End of an Era?' with J. Joenväärä and M. Kauppila (Financial Analysts Journal, 2021), and 'How Much for a Haircut? Illiquidity, Secondary Markets, and the Value of Private Equity' with B. Sensoy (Financial Management, 2022). His scholarship, cited more than 8,000 times, has shaped academic understanding and informed mainstream media coverage of financial markets. Bollen has earned awards such as Vanderbilt's Research Impact Award (2009), Research Productivity Award (2005), and Dean’s Award for Research Impact (2003), along with the Distinguished Referee Award from the Review of Financial Studies (2010). He contributes as Associate Editor for the Journal of Banking and Finance since 2015 and serves on program committees for the Western Finance Association and American Finance Association.