2025 Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors: Kristoph Kleiner, Indiana University Kelley School of Business

Kristoph Kleiner
Indiana University Kelley School of Business

“Kleiner has developed five Kelley courses from scratch – including two MBA fintech electives he now teaches: “Fintech for Managers” and “Fintech Applications in Machine Learning.” This fall 100% of his students rated his teaching “outstanding” (the highest score possible) in anonymous teaching evaluations. Kleiner’s new courses were crucial in enabling our M.S. in Finance program to offer a concentration in fintech that is noted on students’ transcripts. His efforts have allowed Kelley to remain nimble and competitive among our peer schools, helping us to keep our curriculum most relevant and fresh. These electives also enriched the finance major in the MBA program. He showed great initiative in designing these courses from the ground up without the help of any prior offerings to rely on.” – Sreeni Kamma, Associate Dean for Academics

Kristoph Kleiner, 38, is an associate professor of finance and the Daniel C. Smith Faculty Fellow. He is also affiliated with the cross-disciplinary Virtual Department of Advanced Business Technologies and serves as an associate editor for the Review of Financial Studies. 

His research focuses on two areas: (i) promoting and incentivizing entrepreneurship and management (including studies on the career paths of MBA students), and (ii) designing equitable debt relief policies. This research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, and Review of Finance and has received significant coverage across media outlets including The Financial Times, The Economist, Vox, and CNBC. 

Kleiner has developed undergraduate, Master’s of Finance, and MBA courses in banking, fintech, machine learning, and artificial intelligence. He has also developed a PhD course outlining the relationship between finance and the macroeconomy and advised nine PhD dissertations. 

Outside of the classroom, Kleiner relates his research to policy makers and the public. He has worked alongside a range of government agencies, currently as a visiting economist with the FDIC and previously as a PhD student with the Federal Reserve Board and Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also provides financial projections for regional business owners across Indiana as part of the Indiana Indiana Business Futurecast Project.

In recognition of his efforts, he has been awarded honors in research, teaching, and service including the Journal of Finance Brattle Prize Distinguished Paper Award, the Review of Financial Studies Distinguished Referee Award, Kelley School of Business research and teaching Awards, as well as several Best Paper and Best Presentation Awards at national conferences.

BACKGROUND

At current institution since what year? 2014

Education: PhD in Economics from Duke University, Master of Financial Mathematics, North Carolina State University, BS in Mathematics, North Carolina State University

List of MBA courses you currently teach: Fintech for Managers, Fintech Applications in Machine Learning

TELL US ABOUT LIFE AS A BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR

I knew I wanted to be a business school professor when… As an undergraduate student, I had planned to complete a PhD in math. Over time, however, I realized I wanted my research to also be relevant for policy and I thought economics would provide the best avenue for doing so. During my PhD, I was especially impressed with the faculty at the business school: they were focused on asking pressing policy-relevant questions, were the best communicators in both writing and presenting, and they had the most connections with the outside world. That is exactly where I wanted to be. So, when I started my job search, I focused on business school positions, ultimately leading me to join Kelley.

What are you currently researching and what is the most significant discovery you’ve made from it? My recent paper with Niklas Hüther, “Justice Good as Random?,” studies how judges are assigned to court cases. All prior research argues the assignment is random, which is important for two reasons. From a policy perspective, randomization promotes fairness in our judicial system; from an academic perspective, social science researchers often rely on the random assignment of judges as a kind of natural experiment to study the consequences of different judicial and legal decisions.

Our paper shows that far from being random, the assignment of judges to bankruptcy cases is predictable; further, sophisticated lawyers and creditors routinely exploit this predictability to increase the likelihood of being assigned a preferable judge. Our results should help policy makers develop a more equitable judicial system. The econometric approaches we develop will also help academics deal with this lack of randomization and design better natural experiments.

If I weren’t a business school professor… Realistically, I’d be an economist at the Federal Reserve or other agency trying to influence policy. Unrealistically, so many things: TV writer, dog trainer, architect, endurance athlete. 

What do you think makes you stand out as a professor? Teaching topics like artificial intelligence, machine-learning, and fintech requires me to constantly keep up with the most recent technologies. I try my best to bring these current innovations to the classroom. As an example: my current students download a firm’s 10-K filing from the SEC website, then upload the document into a large language model (LLM). Using the LLM, students attempt to estimate the credit risk of the firm, then compare their estimates to traditional measures such as bond ratings. This kind of assignment wasn’t possible just a few years ago but is expected by today’s job recruiters. 

Also, I have a habit of absent-mindedly putting a pencil behind my ear when I’m thinking or talking.

One word that describes my first time teaching: Imposter-Syndrome?

Here’s what I wish someone would’ve told me about being a business school professor: I had a lot to figure out. One thing I learned over time is to limit the amount of time I lecture. Nowadays, I tend to flip my classroom so that students can think through ideas before they are presented with solutions. For example, each week in my machine learning class, students are presented with a new financial dataset, such as stock returns, international sovereign bonds, consumer loan repayments or worker salaries. I’ll start class with a 20-minute lecture introducing a new statistical technique before asking students to apply the technique to the new data. The students work step-by-step on a programming assignment, while I walk around and answer questions. I only present my own code and solutions once students have tried the questions themselves. With this method, students come away with better intuition for the techniques and the ability to apply these ideas to business problems when no clear solution exists.

Professor I most admire and why: So many people. I’m constantly amazed with the talent in our profession. There’s this idea that the best researchers are often impractical, but that hasn’t been my experience. Instead, it seems the skills that make for good researchers are the same as those needed for policy and implementation. 

One name that comes to mind is my Kelley colleague, Greg Udell. He is a very accomplished researcher (the second-most cited economist at IU), but he also has consulted with a variety of governments and organizations like the Federal Reserve, European Central Bank, Bank of Japan, and the World Bank. On a more personal level, he is always positive and supportive of the new research ideas of younger faculty members. Greg just retired this past May, and I helped host his party. It was clear he had the respect of both the academics and policy makers alike.

TEACHING MBA STUDENTS

What do you enjoy most about teaching business students? Students often zone in on the specific lesson of the day without always seeing the bigger picture. I enjoy helping business students connect the dots between economic theory, math/statistical techniques, and real-world business examples. For instance, my fintech students learn how to estimate house prices based on house characteristics, like square footage and location. The students can get close to the true sales price but are off by an average of $30,000. Next, we complete a case study overviewing Zillow’s recent attempt to buy and sell homes using these same machine learning technologies. We find that Zillow ends up losing the same $30,000 on each purchase. Why? Because the owners know more about the house than Zillow and only sell to Zillow if they will make money on the sale. This introduces students to the concept of adverse selection (if sellers know more than buyers, then buyers will lose out), the application of machine learning, and the limitations of applying these techniques without an understanding of the business environment.  

What is most challenging? Teaching MBA students can be challenging as MBAs often have relevant experiences and personal views on class topics. This means I need to be ready for informed students, but it also makes the classroom far more collaborative, interactive, and current. In a recent class, we discussed central bank digital currencies (CBDC). While the US doesn’t have a CBDC (at least not yet), some of the students in class were from countries that had implemented a CBDC in recent years. The students knew far more than me and offered their personal experiences with CBDC. We were able to swap spots where I asked the questions and learned from them.

In one word, describe your favorite type of student: Questioning

In one word, describe your least favorite type of student: Too-Cool-for-School

When it comes to grading, I think students would describe me as… Easy on assignments, tough on exams. I try to give students a lot of practice with the topics in class and at home before they need to demonstrate their knowledge on the test.

LIFE OUTSIDE OF THE CLASSROOM

What are your hobbies? I get to the office very early in the morning so that I have time to exercise in the afternoon; you can find me weightlifting at the gym in the winter and running our many local hiking trails in the summer. Most weekends I am either traveling or working on home renovations. 

How will you spend your summer? I have several conferences and seminars in May including in Germany and Chile. I’m planning to stay a few extra days in Chile to visit the coast and the Andes. Later in the summer, I have some lake trips planned with family and old college friends. In between the trips, you can find me in my outdoor office with my goldendoodle napping under my feet.

Favorite place(s) to vacation: I’ve visited Iceland multiple times now and have loved it. You can easily rent a car and drive around the island without a tour. The landscape changes every hour: beaches, volcanoes, glaciers, lava fields, mountains, and waterfalls. If you ever have a layover in Iceland while traveling to Europe, take a few days and travel around.

Favorite book(s):  Not sure if it’s my favorite, but “The Secret History” by Donna Tartt is the book that’s always stuck with me. It’s a book about a group of close-knit college students that get involved in a murder. It has a lot to say about academia, where I spent most of my career. I read it for the first time in high school and read it again every several years. 

What is currently your favorite movie and/or show and what is it about the film or program that you enjoy so much? I watch a lot of TV, probably too much. My favorite shows over the past year have been: “The Last of Us,” “Hacks,” “Severance,” and “Shrinking.” I always wanted to be a TV writer (see above), and I think these shows have some of the best writing today. 

When I need something on in the background, my wife and I often turn to “The Great British Baking Show” or “Top Chef” (despite my lack of interest in actually cooking/baking), or reruns of “The Office.”

What is your favorite type of music or artist(s) and why? Honestly, I listen to far more podcasts than music nowadays, especially long-form interviews. My podcasts are a mix of current events (like The Ezra Klein Show), comedy (Tosh Show), authors (Conversations with Tyler), academics (People I Mostly Admire), economics (Macromusings), and wellness (Rich Roll). There are so many good podcasts today and you can really learn about any topic of interest.

THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS

If I had my way, the business school of the future would have much more of this… Lively debates. Economics and finance research seminars are very interactive as audience members are constantly interrupting the speaker with tough questions. The first time you attend a research seminar, it can be intimidating; however, over time you realize watching two people debate a complicated topic is the best way to learn and form your own views. I’d like to see more of those same dynamics in the classroom.

In my opinion, companies and organizations today need to do a better job at… Setting clear performance metrics for employees. Some of my research tries to understand how firms can effectively identify and incentivize productivity among current and potential employees. However, many jobs today, especially those in office settings, have no easy way to quantify a given worker’s productivity. This means workers have no clear goals and managers have no easy way to award performance. By clearly outlining the objectives of each job, I believe firms and the economy could see a big productivity gain.

I’m grateful for… So much. I’ve achieved far more than I expected, and this is in large part to my wife, parents and grandparents, teachers, and colleagues. This honor is dedicated to them.

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