pEDRO f. MAKHOUL

Pedro Makhoul is Assistant Professor of Management at Insper (Sao Paulo, Brazil), his Alma Mater. He holds a Ph.D. in Strategy from the University of California - Los Angeles (UCLA), a Masters degree in International Economics and Finance from Brandeis University, and a Bachelors degree in Economics from Insper. His job market paper looked at why firms decide to adopt pyramidal ownership structures and the determinants of the format of these legal organizational designs.

Pedro's research interests are in nonmarket, corporate, and global strategy, and in corporate finance. Besides his work in strategic ownership, he is currently working on developing new methods and theory to analyze firms strategic communication about social and environmental issues to its external stakeholders. Pedro is also researching how the interactions of global firms with certain stakeholders are shaped by nationalistic and xenophobic sentiment and what are the implications of such discrimination to market and nonmarket strategies.

Moreover, Pedro is interested in studying the intersection of public and private. That is, what happens when state actors, such as state-owned companies and sovereign wealth funds, interact with private actors in market situations. His work on this topic has been featured in Strategy Science, the Oxford Handbook of State Capitalism and the Firm, and the book Infraestrutura: Eficiência e Ética (in Portuguese), besides from numerous mentions in Brazilian news outlets.

Pedro is originally from Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he lived most of his life before moving to the US. Ironically, during his time living in Boston, MA, Pedro learned how to speak Spanish, and now is fluent in English, Portuguese and Spanish as well.