Faculty Profile: Skip McGoun

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

Professor of finance

Skip McGoun, 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.

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." In "Walt's Street and Wall Street: Theming, Theater, and Experience in Finance," McGoun argued that Wall Street's structures and institutions act as a theme park or theater, with the employees and customers playing their fantasy roles as popularized by Madison Avenue and Hollywood.
 
When McGoun is not traveling the world, organizing and attending conferences or teaching classes at Bucknell, he is "living out his rock 'n' roll fantasies" taking guitar lessons.

Teaching areas

  • Finance
  • International Business

Research interests

  • History and Philosophy of Finance
  • Finance and Popular Culture

Related publications

  • Elton G. McGoun, Mark S. Bettner, and Douglas E. Allen, "Walt's Street and Wall Street: Theming Theater, and Experience in Finance," Critical Perspectives on Accounting, August 2003.
  • Elton G. McGoun, Mark S. Bettner, and Michael P. Coyne, "Money 'n' Motion – Born to be Wild," Critical Perspectives on Accounting, in press.