Tufano's mutual fund research covers a wide range of topics. He has studied the determinants of fund flows, fund governance, competition, fund distribution channels, fund regulations, fund accounting, and the global fund industry. This work has been published in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, and elsewhere.

Tufano's work on corporate financial engineering includes research and course development about security design, risk management, real options, and strategic uses of financial technology. He developed and teaches a course on Corporate Financial Engineering and his work in this area has been published in the Harvard Business Review, various management and academic journals, and a Prentice-Hall book, Cases in Financial Engineering. His paper on risk management practices in the gold mining industry shared the Smith-Breeden prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Finance.

Tufano's third stream of work is in the field of consumer finance. Part of this research focuses on how to leverage financial innovations to serve the financial service needs of the poor. His work includes field experiments, course development, and statistical research. He is the coordinator of the HBS Executive Education program on Consumer Finance.  He founded and chairs the Doorways to Dreams (D2D) Fund, Inc., a nonprofit R&D lab that translates these ideas into practice in partnership with businesses and policymakers. Recently, Tufano's research contributed to a change in federal tax policy, with IRS Form 8888 permitting the splitting of refunds to support low-income savings.

Tufano is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and serves on several non-profit, research, university, and government advisory boards. He consults to firms, nonprofits and governments; is a mutual fund independent trustee; and teaches in various executive education programs. Before joining the HBS faculty in 1989, Tufano earned his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard University; his MBA from HBS, with high distinction as a Baker Scholar; and his A.B. degree in economics, summa cum laude, from Harvard College.