Faculty
Michelle Hanlon is the Howard W. Johnson Professor, a Professor of Accounting, and Deputy Dean for Faculty and Research at the MIT Sloan School of Management
Hanlon’s primary teaching at Sloan is the Taxes and Business Strategy class. She has won the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching, the MIT Sloan MBA Outstanding Teaching Award, and the MIT Teaching with Digital Technology Award. She has also taught introductory and intermediate financial accounting during her career.
Her research focuses primarily on taxation and the intersection of taxation and financial accounting. Much of her research examines corporate taxation and decision making, the effect of taxes on mergers and acquisitions, corporate tax avoidance and the reputational effects of tax avoidance, the economic consequences of U.S. international tax policies, book-tax conformity, and other topics. She has won numerous awards for her research including the Distinguished Contribution to the Accounting Literature Award from the American Accounting Association, the Outstanding Manuscript Award from the American Taxation Association (three times), and being named a Presidential Scholar of the American Accounting Association.
Hanlon served as an editor at one of the leading accounting research journals for fifteen years. She is a coauthor on three textbooks: 1) Financial Accounting, 2) Taxes and Business Strategy, and 3) Intermediate Accounting (all published by Cambridge Business Publishers).
Hanlon has testified in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance and the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means regarding U.S. tax policy (twice to both committees). She worked as an Academic Fellow for the U.S. House Ways and Means (majority) tax staff (2015).
Hanlon holds a BBA from Eastern Illinois University, an MAcc from the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and a PhD from the University of Washington.
Chen, Shannon, Lisa De Simone, Michelle Hanlon, and Rebecca Lester. The Accounting Review Vol. 98, No. 5 (2023): 187-214.
Hanlon, Michelle. Fiscal Studies: The Journal of Applied Public Economics Vol. 44, No. 1 (2023): 37-52.
Hanlon, Michelle, and Michelle Nessa. National Tax Journal Vol. 76, No. 1 (2023): 193-232. SSRN Preprint.
Dyckman, Thomas R., Michelle Hanlon, Robert P. Magee, and Glenn M. Pfeiffer. Chicago, IL: Cambridge Business Publishers, 2023.
Hanlon, Michelle, Leslie Hodder, Karen Nelson, Darren Roulstone, and Amie Dragoo. Chicago, IL: Cambridge Business Publishers, 2023.
Hanlon, Michelle and Shane Heitzman. Annual Review of Financial Economics Vol. 14, (2022): 509-534.
Interim Dean Georgia Perakis provided alumni at MIT Sloan Reunion 2024 with updates on the state of the school and told everyone how proud she was of them.
The SEC is proposing a new rule that would require public companies to disclose their emissions data and create more transparency. Industry experts unpack its implications.
"They were being quite conservative, actually, because they didn't book the benefit before, and they were very honest about this."
Prof. Michelle Hanlon urges caution in determining AFSI for insurers.
"The lack of a serious accounting system or even basic internal controls contributed to the company's downfall."
"The potential politicization of the FASB will likely lead to lower-quality financial accounting standards and ... earnings.”
