April Klein

Biography

April Klein is the KPMG Faculty Fellow and Professor of Accounting at New York University Stern School of Business. She serves as the Director of the Vincent C. Ross Institute of Accounting. Professor Klein teaches a joint MBA – NYU Law School class in Financial Accounting and Finance, as well as a PhD research course in corporate governance and regulation. She has taught accounting, finance, and corporate governance classes at Columbia Law School, Baruch College, and Warwick Business School.

Professor Klein has been with NYU Stern since 1987. Her primary research areas include board of directors, hedge fund activism, equity analysts, and ESG, the latter including research on cyber risk, board diversity, and financial institutions’ influence on their investees’ ESG policies. She has published extensively in leading academic journals in Accounting, Finance, and Law. Professor Klein is a Research Member of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI) and has been the WBS Distinguished Research Environment Professor at Warwick Business School since 2012. Klein served as a member of the NADAQ Listing and Hearing Review Council. She is on the editorial and advisory board of The Contemporary Accounting Research and The Accounting Review.

Professor Klein received her Bachelor of Arts in Economics and Mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, and her Master of Business Administration and Doctor of Philosophy in Finance from the Graduate School of Business School (now Booth) at the University Chicago.

Research Interests

• Corporate Governance
• Hedge Fund Activism
• ESG

Courses Taught

• Accounting and Finance
• Corporate Governance
• Financial Accounting
• Financial Statement Analysis

Academic Background

Ph.D., Finance
University of Chicago

M.B.A., Finance
University of Chicago

B.A., Economics/Mathematics
University of Pennsylvania

Selected Publications

Klein, Li and Zhang (2020)
Seeking Out Non-Public Information: Sell-side Analysts and the Freedom of Information Act
The Accounting Review (2020) 95 (1): 233–257.

Kim and Klein (2017)
Did the 1999 NYSE and NASDAQ Listing Standard Changes on Audit Committee Composition Benefit Investors?
The Accounting Review (2017) 92 (6): 187–212.

Klein and Zur (2011)
The Implications of Hedge Fund Activism on the Target Firm’s Existing Bondholders
Review of Financial Studies, Volume 24, Issue 5, May 2011, Pages 1735–1771

Klein and Zur (2009)
Entrepreneurial Shareholder Activism: Hedge Funds and Other Private Investors.
The Journal of Finance, Vol. 64, No. 1 (Feb., 2009), pp. 187-229

Klein (2002)
Audit Committee, Board of Director Characteristics and Earnings Management
The Journal of Accounting & Economics, Volume 33, Issue 3

Klein (2002)
Economic Determinants of Audit Committee Independence
The Accounting Review, Vol. 77, No. 2 (Apr., 2002), pp. 435-452