Skip McGoun

"My approach to finance research is different. I investigate finance as a pop-culture phenomenon."

Professor of finance

Skip McGoun, William H. Dunkak Professor of Finance, takes an unusual approach to research in the area of finance. He is the creator and organizer of nine conferences on Alternative Perspectives on Finance. The first conference was held in 1992 in Lewisburg. Subsequent conference sites have helped McGoun satisfy his need to travel, and include exotic locations such as Lake Bled, Slovenia; Turku, Finland; Dundee, Scotland; Stockholm, Sweden; Kilkenny, Ireland; and Zakopane, Poland.

The successor series of conferences organized by colleagues at Stockholm University have been held in Stockholm, Brussels, and Amsterdam.

McGoun hopes the conferences will broaden the dialogue in finance and encourage research that is interdisciplinary or that challenges prevailing beliefs. His own research fits that bill. "My approach to finance research is different. I investigate finance as a pop-culture phenomenon," says McGoun.

Together with colleagues at Bucknell, McGoun has explored such topics as the parallels between motoring and personal investing in articles like "Money 'n' Motion: Born to be Wild," and "Crash: Porsches and Portfolios at the End of the Road" and the role of celebrity in finance in "Has Elvis Left the Building: The Rise — and Fall (?) of Celebrity Fund Managers."  In "Listening to Accounting" and "Dancing the Dow," he has investigated the conversion of financial and accounting information into other forms to engage the other senses in its interpretation.

When McGoun is not traveling the world, organizing and attending conferences or teaching classes at Bucknell, he is spending a lot of time riding a comfortable, but really ugly, bicycle.

Teaching areas

  • Finance
  • International Business

Research interests

  • History and Philosophy of Finance
  • Finance and Popular Culture

Related publications

  • Mark S. Bettner, Ann-Christine Frandsen, and Elton G. McGoun, "Listening to Accounting," Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 2010.
  • Elton G. McGoun, Mark S. Bettner, and Michael P. Coyne, "Money 'n' Motion — Born to be Wild," Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 2008.
  • Janice Traflet and Elton G. McGoun, "Has Elvis Left the Building? The Rise — and Fall (?) of Celebrity Fund Managers," Journal of Cultural Economy, 2008.

Updated Jan. 26, 2010