Michael B. Imerman
Biography
Michael B. Imerman, Ph.D., is Faculty Director of the Master of Finance Program and Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine. His research focuses on credit risk, FinTech, banking, and financial regulation, with particular emphasis on how technological innovation is transforming financial services. Imerman previously held the Theodore A. Lauer Distinguished Professorship at Lehigh University and served as Associate Professor of Finance at Claremont Graduate University's Drucker School of Management, where he left with tenure. He has also served as Visiting Scholar and FinTech Policy Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
Imerman's research has been published in journals including the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Journal of Corporate Finance, Journal of Banking and Finance, and Journal of Business and Economic Statistics. His work on structural credit risk models and financial institutions during the 2008 financial crisis has been cited extensively, and his research on FinTech innovation has been recognized with an SSRN All Time Top Ten ranking in Entrepreneurship & Finance. He is Editor-in-Chief of The Journal of Private Markets Investing and serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Financial Data Science. Imerman has authored two books with MIT Press, including The Economics of FinTech: Understanding Digital Transformation in Financial Services.
Imerman received his Ph.D. in Management with a major in Finance from Rutgers University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University under Professor Jianqing Fan. At UC Irvine, he has received the Paul Merage School of Business Excellence in Teaching Award for Best Elective and the Junior Faculty Research Award. He teaches courses on venture capital and private equity, financial innovation, financial institutions, and applied machine learning for finance.
Return to topEducation
- B.S. in Finance, Rutgers University, 2004
- Ph.D. in Management, Rutgers University, 2011
Distinctions
- Semi-Finalist, FMA Best Paper Award in Financial Markets and Institutions, 2012, 2018
- SSRN All Time TOP TEN Entrepreneurship & Finance, 2020
- SSRN All Time TOP TEN Credit Risk Paper, 2014
- Emerald Publishing Highly Commended Paper Award, 2015
- Theodore A. Lauer Distinguished Professorship, 2015-2018
- Emerald Group Publishing Literati Award for Outstanding Reviewer, 2014
- BLAIS Challenge Award – Disrupting Finance: The Claremont Joint FinTech Initiative, 2021
- Drucker School of Management Financial Engineering Faculty of the Year Award, 2020
- Drucker School of Management Faculty of the Year Award, 2019
- Paul Merage School of Business Excellence in Teaching Award – Best Elective for FEMBA, VC&PE, 2025
Areas of Expertise
- Financial Technology Innovation
- Credit Risk Modeling
- Venture Capital Financing
- Banking Regulation
- Machine Learning Applications
- Private Equity Markets
- Climate Disclosure Uncertainty
Recent Publications
- Michael B. Imerman, Jeff Hooke, Xiaohua Hu, “Residual Risk: Benchmarking the Boom in Private Credit”, Journal of Private Markets Investing, vol. 1, no. 1, 2025.
- Michael B. Imerman, Xiaoxia Ye, Ran Zhao, “Voluntary Disclosures and Climate Change Uncertainty: Evidence from CDS Premiums”, Journal of Corporate Finance, vol. 94, 2025.
- Michael B. Imerman, Frank J. Fabozzi, “Quantifying disruption in the age of AI: An AI-based approach to evaluating startup innovation and investment potential”, Finance Research Letters, vol. 82, 2025.
- Michael B. Imerman, Frank J. Fabozzi, “The Economics of FinTech: Understanding Digital Transformation in Financial Services”, MIT Press, 2025.
- Michael B. Imerman, Allen Carrion, Hong Zhang, “SPAC to Basics: A Monte Carlo Approach to Valuing De-SPAC Warrants with Path-Dependent Redemption Features”, Journal of Derivatives, vol. 32, no. 2, pp. 9-21, 2024.
- Michael B. Imerman, Ryan Patel, Yoon-Do Kim, “Cloud finance: A review and synthesis of cloud computing and cloud security in financial services”, Journal of Financial Transformation, vol. 55, pp. 18-25, 2022.
- Michael B. Imerman, Philip Ernst, Larry Shepp, Quan Zhou, “Fiscal stimulus as an optimal control problem”, Stochastic Processes and their Applications, vol. 150, pp. 1091-1108, 2022.
- Michael B. Imerman, “When Enough is Not Enough: Bank Capital and the Too Big to Fail Premium”, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, vol. 55, no. 4, pp. 1371-1406, 2020.
- Michael B. Imerman, Thomas J. Chemmanur, Harshit Rajaiya, Qianqian Yu, “Recent Developments in the FinTech Industry”, Financial Management, Markets and Institutions, vol. 8, no. 1, 2020.
- Michael B. Imerman, Frank J. Fabozzi, “Cashing in on innovation: a taxonomy of FinTech”, Journal of Asset Management, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 167-177, 2020.
- Michael B. Imerman, Jianqing Fan, Wei Dai, “What does the volatility risk premium say about liquidity provision and demand for hedging tail risk?”, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 519-535, 2016.
- Michael B. Imerman, Ren-Raw Chen, N.K. Chidambaran, Ben J. Sopranzetti, “Liquidity, Leverage, and Lehman: A Structural Analysis of Financial Institutions in Crisis”, Journal of Banking and Finance, vol. 45, pp. 117-139, 2014.
- Michael B. Imerman, Joseph R. Mason, Hong Lee, “Self-reporting under SEC Reg AB and transparency in securitization: Evidence from loan-level disclosure of risk factors in RMBS deals”, The Journal of Risk Finance, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 334-384, 2014.
- Michael B. Imerman, “Structural Credit Risk Models: Endogenous Versus Exogenous Default”, Encyclopedia of Finance, 2nd Edition, Springer, 2013.
Contact Information
Email: mimerman@uci.edu
Phone: 949-824-9468
Address: 3230 School of Business 1, Irvine, CA 92697-3125
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Last updated on 3/24/2026.