12-12-2024
The Daniels School welcomes to Purdue two esteemed professors at the top of their fields — Judson Caskey and Martin Dufwenberg — hired as part of the university’s Moveable Dream Hires program.
Judson Caskey is Professor of Accounting at the UCLA Anderson School of Management and an editor at The Accounting Review, the American Accounting Association’s flagship journal.
“Judson is a highly visible and impactful scholar in accounting research,” says Lin Nan, senior associate dean and management department head. Caskey will teach at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, and possibly in the school’s executive education programs. He joins Purdue in fall 2025.
Caskey focuses on both empirical and modeling research in financial accounting, specifically on the role of accounting disclosures within the context of informed decision-making. He analyzes the content of accounting disclosures and how that content is processed. His empirical research examines the information conveyed by financial reports and how investors use it. Past projects examine the disclosure and structure of lending arrangements and how accounting information affects stock prices and multiples.
At UCLA, Caskey taught the MBA financial accounting core, a financial accounting elective, and theoretical and empirical subjects in Anderson’s PhD program.
When weighing his move to Purdue, Caskey says he factored in the “intellectual environment, especially among accounting faculty, excellent business school and university, and a safe, quiet town to live in.
“Purdue has it all in terms of what my wife Sharareh and I were looking for. I was already well-acquainted with most of the accounting faculty, and excited at the prospect of having them as colleagues and coauthors,” he says.
Caskey adds he was impressed by what he saw when he visited campus. “In the early morning, we saw many students already up and studying in the coffee shops. That combination of smarts plus work ethic almost guarantees career success.”
He says he has no qualms about leaving southern California for Indiana. “My wife spent her teenage and college years in the Toronto area, while I spent mine in Michigan, so we know and appreciate the four seasons,” he says. “We also look forward to living in a college town that has the quietness of a small town plus the extras that the university brings.”
The Daniels School is more rigorous than its peers in theoretical accounting, notes Dr. Samuel R. Allen Dean Jim Bullard. Caskey’s hire highlights and builds upon that rigor.
The school’s accounting department has added several outstanding researchers in recent years, says Emanuel T. Weiler Professor Gus De Franco — and Caskey’s hire continues the momentum.
“He is an exceptional scholar and a welcome addition to our faculty,” says De Franco.
Martin Dufwenberg is the Karl and Stevie Eller Professor of Economics and director of the Institute for Behavioral Economics at the University of Arizona’s Eller College of Management. He has served as the college’s economics department head since 2020. Dufwenberg’s research explores topics in behavioral economics. He works on how to incorporate emotions and other forms of belief-dependent motivations into economic analysis using an analytical framework called psychological game theory. He comes to Purdue in summer 2025.
“He brings a unique blend of theoretical and experimental approaches to the study of economics,” says Brian Roberson, economics department head and senior associate dean. “Dufwenberg’s research on psychological game theory allows for a deeper understanding of human behavior in strategic settings, incorporating emotions, social norms, and image concerns. His reputation as a leading scholar in these areas contributes to the economics department’s continued strength in behavioral and experimental economic research.”
Roberson says Dufwenberg will teach all academic levels — undergraduate to PhD — and will be involved with the school’s Vernon Smith Experimental Economics Laboratory and the Center for Behavioral Economics, Experiments and Public Policy.
“His expertise and innovative research will be valuable assets to our department and the broader Purdue community,” says Roberson.
Dufwenberg says he is fascinated by strategic interaction not only in theory but in practice.
“I use game theory and experiments to incorporate insights from psychology into economic analysis,” he says. “Many of my new colleagues at the Daniels School have overlapping research interests and they have done work that I admire greatly. I’m thrilled to join the team and look forward to interacting with them.”
Dufwenberg was educated at Uppsala University in Sweden and enjoys golf, tennis, squash, bridge, and poker. He’s enjoyed more than two decades in Arizona but says Purdue’s enthusiasm and the refresh from meeting new colleagues drew him to the Daniels School.
The talent-based Moveable Dream Hires program is designed to attract high-performing, top-caliber faculty to Purdue even when the topic-based openings in a given year do not match the moveable talent.
