Leila Davis

Leila Davis joined the Economics department at Middlebury College in the Fall of 2014, after completing her PhD at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She holds a B.A. in Economics and International Studies from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Leila’s research and teaching fields include macroeconomics, international economics, and growth and inequality. She is particularly interested in the dramatic growth in finance that has taken place over recent decades in the United States and also internationally. Her dissertation analyzes the recent ‘financialization’ of nonfinancial corporations in the U.S. economy and, in particular, the implications for fixed investment. Her results emphasize increasingly entrenched shareholder value norms and rising demand volatility as two factors supporting an increasingly short-term and financial orientation among nonfinancial firms and, in particular, as important factors inhibiting the allocation of funds for fixed investment.

To learn more about Leila visit her web page, www.leiladavis.net.

Featuring this expert

Are Corporations’ Financial Investments Slowing Growth?

Video | Aug 9, 2017

Davis looks at the financialization of non-financial corporations—i.e., firms that traditionally produce goods and services and invest in machinery, buildings and technology rather than trade in financial assets—and asks what it means that they’re taking on large financial investments.