In Memoriam Arijit Mukherji

Transcription

1 Fall 2001 The Economics Department suffered a terrible loss last fall when Arijit Mukherji died suddenly, at a tragically young age. Although Ari did not have an official appointment in the Department, he was an active participant in its life, both intellectually and socially. He was regarded by all members of the faculty as an important colleague, and he was a mentor of a great many of our graduate students. For all of us he was a wonderful friend. In Memoriam Arijit Mukherji by Andy McLennan Minnesota Economics Graduate Alumni Newsletter He was an outstanding judge of quality across a wide range of fields, with a keen sense of how work might be improved. Naturally, many sought his advice, and he gave generously. It is widely believed that during the five years preceeding his death he served on more preliminary and final oral examining committees of Economics students than any Economics Department faculty member, probably by a wide margin. A native of India, after undergraduate work at the University of Calcutta, Ari did his doctoral studies at the University of Pittsburgh and joined the faculty of the Carlson School of Management s Accounting Department in 1990, where he remained throughout his career, rising to the rank of Associate Professor in He was a leader in the area of experimental economics, and did extensive research concerning incentive issues in managerial accounting, auditing, and financial disclosure. His many collaborators from the Economics Department include Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Steve Gjerstad, Jim Jordan and Todd Kaplan. Ari s tastes in economics were very much in line with the ethos of the Economics Department: he placed high value on fundamental contributions, and he had a passionate concern with rigor that seemed to flow out of an insistence on thorough and exact understanding in his own education. Perhaps because stereotypic MBA students have little interest in rigor, it was a bit of a surprise when I learned, after his death, that he had been an extremely popular MBA teacher. He was the Curtis Cup Outstanding Teacher of the Year in 1993, 1996, 1997, and In 1997 he was voted Professor of the Year by the Full-time Day MBA class, and the Carlson Executive MBA class of 2000 honored him with a Lifetime Teaching Award. (It came as no surprise to me that he was a excellent teacher, and it is not at all remarkable that I never learned of these honors by talking to Ari himself.) The depth of his impact was evident at the memorial service held in his honor, which was attended by hundreds of students, colleagues, and friends, many of whom traveled hundreds of miles. Perhaps most of those present had not previously fully appreciated the extent to which he excelled in every aspect of academic life. He will be greatly missed.

2 Minnesota Economics Graduate Alumni Newsletter Remembering Arijit Mukherji by Jim Jordan No remarks made here could embellish our varied memories of someone who was such a vivid presence in our lives. This task is made all the more difficult by the fact that even the subset of Ari s friends who are here today is a much larger and more distinguished group than I have any experience addressing. These remarks are merely by way of participating in our shared enjoyment of having known him. Like others here, I had the privilege of being Ari s coauthor, and as such I was a direct beneficiary of his encyclopedic knowledge of accounting and economic theory, and his absolute commitment to work as long as it took to get things exactly right. His scholarly publications alone would constitute the accomplishment of a distinguished career, but he frequently complained to me that he did not have enough time for his research, and needed to find a way to reduce the time devoted to his teaching in order to spend more time on research. In this he was a chronic victim of revealed preference, for teaching was his consuming activity. I had little direct experience with his classroom teaching, which was legendary, but I saw on a daily basis his extraordinary work with graduate students. He was available at any hour of any day to help a student with any aspect of his work, and would help with every page of a student s paper and every point in a student s presentation. When a student was preparing a job-market presentation to another department, he would take the student around the virtual seminar room, mentioning each faculty member of the other department in turn, all of whom he knew, telling the student exactly what question that person would ask and exactly how the student should answer. Some students who had become accustomed to benign neglect from their other committee members found this relentless attention overwhelming, and in some cases seemed on the verge of seeking protection from what they would probably have described as advisorial harassment, but it never came to this because Ari was one of those rare people who can be aggressively assertive in a completely self-effacing way. Ari had a level of energy that is called youthful only by middle-aged people who mistakenly think they once had it. On one of his visits to Penn State we spent a few hours hiking in the mountains near State College, and Ari easily walked up ridges that it had taken me a full year of regular hiking to go up without frequent pauses for breath. On the steep parts I tried not to interrupt his conversation with my breathing. Continued next page... 8

3 Minnesota Economics Graduate Alumni Newsletter Continued from previous page... Ari had a voracious appetite for the business and financial press, and his office was littered with the remains of his meals. Whenever I would go to his office in search of a recent example of some issue I was writing or teaching about, I would always leave with an armload of books. He was always disappointed when I returned them, for their places had been taken by their successors, and he would now have to find room for books he had already read. It is common for academic departments to honor the memory of a departed colleague by inviting contributions to a university library in his honor. In Ari s case it would be more fitting simply to put the word library below his nameplate on his office and invite colleagues to receive rather than contribute.

4 Obituary: Arijit (Ari) Mukherji, 38, professor By Lucy Y. Her, Star Tribune Last update: November 8, :00 PM Colleagues and students who knew Arijit (Ari) Mukherji couldn't stop bragging about him, describing him as a "superstar teacher" among other glowing testimonials. "He had a passion for teaching," said Kathryn Carlson, assistant dean and director of the Carlson Executive MBA program at the University of Minnesota. "He was able to bring so many relevant aspects of the world into the classroom, and I think that's what endears him." Mukherji, an associate professor at the university's Carlson School of Management who had won numerous teaching awards, died Oct. 30 from heart-related problems in his home in Minneapolis. He was 38. This year, he was honored with a lifetime teaching award. He was chosen MBA professor of the year in 1997, and in the nine years that he taught at the university, he was honored four times with the Curtis Cup outstanding teacher of the year award. "When I think of Ari, I think of passion, spirit, dedication, intellect, and what a loss," Carlson said. "There won't be another Ari." She added that she never thought she'd understand accounting, "but I do because of Ari." Now, she's even thinking about teaching the subject. Polly Foss, business development manager of health care at 3M, said Mukherji was the professor who influenced her life the most. "He cared so much," she said. "He always made time to go out with the students after class." Mukherji started working for the university in 1991 as an assistant professor. John Dickhaut, chairman of the accounting department, said Mukherji "had an intense awareness of what was going on in the world." He was known for his "incredible memory," Dickhaut said, and often told his MBA students about historic events in the companies in which they worked, he said. Mukherji also was known for his accounting and economic research, which made him a resource for many colleagues. Recently, he coauthored papers on corporate spinoffs. "He was an extraordinary instructor," said Edward S. Adams, professor of law at the university. "He was very diligent about his classroom preparations. He wanted everyone to learn."

5 Mukherji was born in India. He came to the United States in the 1980s after receiving a bachelor's degree from the University of Calcutta. He received a doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh in "He was 100 percent academic and he liked the academic environment," said Chandra Kanodia, a Honeywell professor of accounting who lives in Maple Grove. "Here, he had the opportunity to develop his ideas," and the school was like a family to him, she said. Survivors include his parents, Prasanta and Anuradha of Calcutta, and a sister, Kamalika of London. Services will be held at 3 p.m. Dec. 1 at the 3M Auditorium at the Carlson School of Management, th Av. S. Minneapolis. Lucy Y. Her can be contacted at lher@startribune.com

6 Arijit Mukherji BSc. University of Calcutta Phd. University of Pittsburgh 1991 Associate Professor, Accounting Department, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota Assistant Professor, Accounting Department, Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota Editorial Board of the Review of Accounting Studies Publications: Costly Monitoring in a Principal-Agent Model Author: Mukherji, Arijit Degree: Ph.D. Institution: University of Pittsburgh Year: 1991 Dissertation Designing an Incentive-Compatible Contract Author: Kaplan, Todd; Mukherji, Arijit In: Economic and financial modeling with Mathematica.; 26-57; Santa Clara, Calif.: Springer, The Electronic Library of Science (TELOS), Publication: 1993 Audit Pricing, Lowballing and Auditor Turnover: A Dynamic Analysis Author: Kanodia, Chandra; Mukherji, Arijit Source: Accounting Review v69, n4 (October 1994): An experimental study of learning and limited information in games Author: McCabe, Kevin A.; Mukherji, Arijit; Runkle, David E. Publication: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, Staff Report: Moral Hazard and Contractibility in Investment Decisions Author: Mukherji, Arijit; Nagarajan, Nandu J. Source: Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization v26, n3 (May 1995): An Experimental Study of Strategic Information Transmission Author: Dickhaut, John W.; McCabe, Kevin A.; Mukherji, Arijit Source: Economic Theory v6, n3 (November 1995): Real Effects of Separating Investment and Operating Cash Flows Author: Kanodia, Chandra; Mukherji, Arijit Source: Review of Accounting Studies v1, n1 (March 1996): Delayed Financial Disclosure: Mexico's Recent Experience Author: Braun, R. Anton; Mukherji, Arijit; Runkle, David E. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review v20, n4 (Fall 1996): Auctions, Dickhaut, John; Gjerstad, Steven; Mukherji, Arijit In: Computational economics and finance: Modeling and analysis with Mathematica; ; Santa Clara, Calif.: Springer, The Electronic Library of Science (TELOS), Publication: 1996

7 Activity-Based Costing for Economic Value Added Author: Anctil, Regina M.; Jordan, James S.; Mukherji, Arijit Source: Review of Accounting Studies v2, n3 (1997): The Asymptotic Optimality of Residual Income Maximization Anctil, Regina M.; Jordan, James S.; Mukherji, Arijit Source: Review of Accounting Studies v2, n3 (1997): Oligopoly, Financial Structure, and Resolution of Uncertainty Author: Hughes, John S.; Kao, Jennifer L.; Mukherji, Arijit Source: Journal of Economics and Management Strategy v7, n1 (Spring 1998): Hedge Disclosures, Future Prices, and Production Distortions C Kanodia, A Mukherji, H Sapra, R Venugopalan - JOURNAL OF ACCOUNTING RESEARCH, An Experimental Study of Information and Mixed-Strategy Play in the Three-Person Matching-Pennies Game Author: McCabe, Kevin A.; Mukherji, Arijit; Runkle, David E. Source: Economic Theory v15, n2 (March 2000): Learning to Be Unpredictable: An Experimental Study Author: Mukherji, Arijit; Runkle, David E. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review v24, n2 (Spring 2000): Information management and valuation: an experimental investigation J Dickhaut, M Ledyard, A Mukherji, H Sapra - Games and Economic Behavior, 2003 Self-Fulfilling Currency Crises: The Role of Interest Rates Author: Hellwig, Christian; Mukherji, Arijit; Tsyvinski, Aleh Source: American Economic Review v96, n5 (December 2006):