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Congratulations to Steve Kaplan for his selection as 2025 AFA Fellow.  Professor Kaplan is the Neubauer Family Distinguished Service Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance and Kessenich E.P. Faculty Director at the Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on private equity, venture capital, entrepreneurial finance, corporate governance and corporate finance.

Professor Kaplan received his AB, summa cum laude, in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Harvard College and earned a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University.

In January 2000, the Board of Directors of The American Finance Association instituted a Society of Fellows of the Association. The purpose of the society is to recognize those members who have made a distinguished contribution to the field of finance.

The American Finance Association has selected Tyler Muir as the 2025 recipient of the Fischer Black Prize. Tyler Muir is the Donnalisa ’86 and Bill Barnum Endowed Term Chair in Management at UCLA Anderson School of Management. His research interests include asset pricing, financial intermediaries, and financial crises.

Before joining UCLA Anderson, Muir was on the faculty of the Yale School of Management. He also serves as a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He earned his Ph.D. in finance from the Kellogg School of Management and his B.A. in mathematics from UC Berkeley.

The Fischer Black Prize honors the memory of Fischer Black, formerly a General Partner at Goldman Sachs and Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago (1971-1975) and at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1975-1984).  His seminal research included the development (with Myron Scholes) of the widely applied Black-Scholes Option Pricing Model. The Fischer Black Prize was established in 2002 and honors individual financial research. It is awarded for a body of work that best exemplifies the Fischer Black hallmark of developing original research that is relevant to finance practice.

In the interest of developing a more coordinated job market that benefits all involved, the AFA Board of Directors has approved the following recommended guidelines regarding the rookie job market. Please consider these guidelines as you participate in the 2024-25 job market.

Timing of offers and “exploding” offers

In order to ensure that the job market remains sufficiently synchronized and thick, and that candidates have a chance to compare offers, the AFA recommends that employers leave job offers open (i.e. do not require candidates to accept or decline) until at least February 10 (midnight).

The AFA also strongly recommends that employers give candidates at least two weeks to consider their job offer.  We recognize that offers made late in the job market season (e.g., March or later) may be of shorter duration.  In some circumstances, employers are under heavy pressure to give less time to candidates for various reasons.  If that is absolutely necessary, we recommend that employers give candidates a minimum of one week to consider the offer, and that candidates be given advance notice of this (e.g. at the flyout stage) whenever possible. 

Rationale: Recently, there is concern about a rise in “exploding offers” – i.e., offers for which candidates are given too few days to sufficiently consider the offer and their alternatives. This can prevent candidates from learning about their options or comparing offers, and at the extreme can be coercive.  Giving candidates two weeks (or, late in the job market season, at least one week) to consider an offer is a reasonable standard.

These guidelines are designed for the AFA rookie recruiting cycle and do not pertain to recruiting cycles for other job markets such as the FMA or European job markets.