Dennis J. Aigner is Professor Emeritus of Management & Economics at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine (UCI). From 2000-05, he was Dean of the Bren School of Environmental Science & Management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. From 1988-97 he was Dean of the Graduate School of Management at UCI (now the Merage School). Before that, he was Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Department of Economics at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. He received his BS and Ph.D. degrees in Agricultural Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and holds an MA in Applied Statistics from that same institution. He was on the teaching faculties at the University of Illinois and the University of Wisconsin-Madison prior to his appointment at USC in 1976.
Aigner's publication record includes several books and numerous articles on statistical and econometric methodology, and applied econometrics. He was founding editor of the Journal of Econometrics and one of its co-editors for 20 years. Over the course of his career, he received research grants from the National Science Foundation, USEPA, the Packard Foundation, and UC-Mexus.
Aigner’s current research focuses on empirical and theoretical work relating to the linkage between corporate environmental performance and financial performance. For several years he organized a research workshop on behalf of the USEPA on “Capital Markets and Environmental Performance” that explored the topic with academic researchers, practitioners, and members of the corporate sector. More recently, he completed a survey of the top 400 Mexican firms with regard to their sustainability practices, funded by a UC-MEXUS grant. From 2012-14 he held the position of Distinguished Visiting Professor at the EGADE Business School of the Monterrey Institute of Technology (Mexico). In 2015 he received a second UC-MEXUS grant to explore the nature and extent of corporate engagement of Mexican environmental and social NGOs. Since 2019 he has been working on the human health risks from industrial pollution in Mexico.
“Sustainability and Competitiveness in Mexico” (with A. Lloret), Management Research Review, Vol. 36 (2013), pp. 1252-71.
“Index to Estimate the Efficiency of an Ophthalmic Practice” (with A. Chen, E.A. Kim, A. Affifi, and J. Caprioli), JAMA Ophthalmology, Vol. 133 (2015), pp. 924-29.
“Corporate Social Responsibility and Financial Performance”, Ch. 1 in R. Manos and I. Drori (Eds.), Corporate Social Action. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, pp. 11–37.
“The Effects of Organizational Traits on NGO-Business Engagement in Mexico” (with L. Pesqueira), Sustainability, Vol. 12 (2020). doi: 10.3390/su122310108.
“Journal of Econometrics: The First 20 Years”, Journal of Econometrics, Vol. 234 (2023), pp. 7-8.
“Statistical Approaches for Assessing Disparate Impact in Fair Housing Cases” (with M. del Angel and J. Wiles), Statistics and Public Policy, Vol. 11 (2024), pp. 1-17. Doi: 10.1080/2330443X.2023.2263038.
Fulbright Scholar, Belgium, 1970-71
Fellow, Econometric Society (elected 1972)
H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellow, University of Wisconsin, 1976
American Statistical Association Visiting Lecturer in Statistics, 1980-1983
Fulbright Scholar, Israel, May 1983
Cited in: Who's Who in Economics (MIT Press) 1982, 1984; (Edward Elgar) 1999. Who's Who in America (Marquis Who's Who, Inc.) 1984- .
Albert S. Raubenheimer Award for Excellence in Scholarship, Teaching and Service, USC, l985.
Award for Teaching Excellence, Division of Social Sciences and Communications, USC, 1986.
Studies in Econometrics in Honor of Dennis J. Aigner, a special issue of the Journal of Econometrics, 1993.
Daniel G. Aldrich, Jr. Award for University Service, UCI, 1996.
Bren Fellow in Business Management, UC Santa Barbara, 1998-2005
Distinguished Research Award, Argyros School of Business & Economics, Chapman University, 1999
International Professor in Environmental Management and Strategy, Graduate School of Business Administration and Leadership, Monterrey Institute of Technology (Mexico), 2001-08
Distinguished Research Fellow, UCLA Institute for the Environment, 2004-05
Alumnus of the Year, College of Natural Resources, Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UC Berkeley, 2010
Distinguished Visiting Professor, EGADE Business School, Monterrey Institute of Technology, Mexico City, 2012-14
