About

Christian Leuz is the Charles F. Pohl Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting and Finance at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. He holds several prestigious research affiliations, including being a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Policy Research and the Leibniz Institute SAFE, an EPIC Scholar, and a Fellow at the European Corporate Governance Institute, Goethe Universität Frankfurt’s Center for Financial Studies, and the CESifo Research Network. His research focuses on the role of disclosure and transparency in capital markets and other settings, with particular attention to sustainability and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) issues. He also studies the economic effects of regulation, international accounting, corporate governance, and finance.

Research topics

• Business
• Accounting
• Political Science
• Finance
• Economics
• Financial system
• Public relations

Selected publications

• Fighting Fire with Fire: On Allowing Mergers of Large Buyers to Counter Seller Market Power

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• A Sense of Urgency

  Open MIND · 2025-01-01

  other

  There is broad agreement on the urgency of sustainability issues, especially climate change and biodiversity. While reporting is crucial, it is not sufficient—regulation and incentives are also necessary. Effective disclosure can bridge the gap between corporate and societal urgency. Standard-setting bodies like the ISSB play a role, but political will is critical. The focus should be on core urgent issues first, ensuring clear, comparable metrics to drive informed decision-making and policy action.

  Publisher

• Who Falls Prey to the Wolf of Wall Street? Investor Participation in Market Manipulation

  Management Science · 2025-11-14

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Price distortions created by so-called “pump-and-dump” schemes are well documented, but relatively little is known about the investors in these schemes. By examining 470 pump-and-dump schemes and a large data set of trading records for over 110,000 individual investors from a major German bank, we provide comprehensive evidence on the participation rate, the magnitude of the investments, the losses, and the characteristics of the individuals who invest in such schemes. Participation is quite common, with nearly 8% of active retail investors participating in at least one pump-and-dump losing on average nearly 30%. We identify several distinct types of participating investors, some of which (e.g., speculating day trader) should not be viewed as falling prey to the schemes. We also show that portfolio composition and past trading behavior better explain scheme participation than demographics. Last, we document longer-lasting effects on participating investors beyond their immediate financial losses. Our analysis highlights that an effective regulatory response to pump-and-dump schemes requires understanding who invests in such schemes and why, as, for instance, not all investors are likely to be dissuaded from investing by traditional regulatory disclosures. This paper was accepted by Eric So, accounting. Funding: This work was supported by the Clark Center for Global Markets at the University of Chicago and the Danish Finance Institute. Supplemental Material: The internet appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03181 .

  PublisherDOI

• A Sense of Urgency

  Open MIND · 2025-01-01

  other

  There is broad agreement on the urgency of sustainability issues, especially climate change and biodiversity. While reporting is crucial, it is not sufficient—regulation and incentives are also necessary. Effective disclosure can bridge the gap between corporate and societal urgency. Standard-setting bodies like the ISSB play a role, but political will is critical. The focus should be on core urgent issues first, ensuring clear, comparable metrics to drive informed decision-making and policy action.

  Publisher

• <div> <span>Internalizing Externalities through Public Pressure: Transparency Regulation for Fracking, Drilling Activity and Water Quality</span><span> </span></div>

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The death of a regulator: Strict supervision, bank lending, and business activity

  Journal of Financial Economics · 2024-06-07 · 29 citations

  articleSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Internalizing Externalities: Disclosure Regulation for Hydraulic Fracturing, Drilling Activity and Water Quality

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Internalizing Externalities through Public Pressure: Transparency Regulation for Fracking, Drilling Activity and Water Quality

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2023-01-01 · 15 citations

  reportOpen access

  The rise of shale gas and tight oil development has triggered a major debate about hydraulic fracturing (HF). In an effort to bring light to HF practices and their potential risks to water quality, many U.S. states have mandated disclosure for HF wells and the fluids used. We employ this setting to study whether targeting corporate activities that have dispersed externalities with transparency reduces their environmental impact. Examining salt concentrations that are considered signatures for HF impact, we find significant and lasting improvements in surface water quality between 9-14% after the mandates. Most of the improvement comes from the intensive margin. We document that operators pollute less per unit of production, cause fewer spills of HF fluids and wastewater and use fewer hazardous chemicals. Turning to how transparency regulation works, we show that it increases public pressure and enables social movements, which facilitates internalization.

  PublisherDOI

• Internalizing Externalities: Disclosure Regulation for Hydraulic Fracturing, Drilling Activity and Water Quality

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01 · 8 citations

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Do Conflict of Interests Disclosures Work? Evidence from Citations in Medical Journals

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2023-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Luzi Hail

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  382 shared

• Hans Bonde Christensen

  University of Chicago

  185 shared

• Francis E. Warnock

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  112 shared

• Karl V. Lins

  University of Utah

  106 shared

• Anup Malani

  University of Chicago

  72 shared

• João Granja

  University of Chicago

  66 shared

• Raghuram G. Rajan

  Hoover Institution

  62 shared

• Christian Laux

  European Corporate Governance Institute

  56 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Goethe University Frankfurt

• Other

  Goethe University Frankfurt

• Other

  Maastricht University

  2024

Awards & honors

• Chicago Booth Class of 2023 Phoenix Award
• 2022 ACA Prize in Financial Governance
• 2016 Distinguished Contribution to the Accounting Literature…
• 2014 Distinguished Contribution to the Accounting Literature…
• Humboldt Research Award (2012)