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.