Gus De Franco

Biography

Gus De Franco is the Keehn Berry Chair of Banking & Finance, Professor of Accounting, and Accounting Area Coordinator at Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business. He also serves on the school’s leadership team as Senior Associate Dean for Research. A distinguished scholar, De Franco rejoined the Freeman School in 2026 after serving the previous three years as the Emanuel T. Weiler Professor and Accounting Area Head at Purdue University’s Mitch Daniels School of Business. From 2016 to 2023, he was the KPMG Professor of Accounting at the Freeman School. De Franco’s research interests include sell-side analysts, CFA charter holders, private firms’ accounting quality, relative valuation and firms’ choice of compensation peers. His scholarly articles have appeared in premier journals including the Journal of Accounting & Economics, Journal of Accounting Research and The Accounting Review, as well as the Journal of Financial Economics and Management Science. He has also served multiple terms as editor of Contemporary Accounting Research. His academic career includes appointments at leading institutions including the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and the MIT Sloan School of Management. De Franco holds a PhD from the Wharton School, an MBA from Harvard University, and an HBA from Western University. Prior to beginning his career in academia, he served as an equity research analyst at CIBC Capital Markets and a marketing product manager at Kraft Foods.