UC Davis has the following experts who can comment on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which was signed into law on July 21.

Corporate governance

Steven Currall, dean of the UC Davis Graduate School of Management and professor of management, is a behavioral scientist who has conducted extensive research on corporate governance and boards of directors. He has advised organizations such as Schlumberger, BMC Software, BP and Shell. He is a member of the boards of the University of California Global Health Institute, BioHouston (chair of Governance Committee), Leadership in Medicine Inc., and Nanotechnology Foundation of Texas. Contact: Steven Currall, Graduate School of Management, (530) 752-7366, scc@ucdavis.edu.

Thomas Joo, a professor of law at the UC Davis School of Law, believes the Dodd-Frank Act does little to address the real problems that caused the banking crisis. It does not break up institutions that are "too big to fail" or impose significant limits on risky activities by banks, he says. The act does contain some reforms, Joo notes, but their exact content is unclear because they depend on further rulemaking by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Joo is an expert on corporate governance and the editor of "Corporate Governance: Law, Theory and Policy." Contact: Thomas Joo, School of Law, (530) 754-6089, twjoo@ucdavis.edu.

Accounting, valuation and the role of information

Paul Griffin, a UC Davis management professor and an internationally recognized specialist in accounting, financial valuation and the role of information in security markets, has been discussing the financial reform legislation in one of his classes. Some of Griffin’s most recent work examines the effects of securities fraud litigation on investors and creditors in securities markets. Contact: Paul Griffin, Graduate School of Management, (530) 752-7372, pagriffin@ucdavis.edu.

Treatment of rating agencies

John Patrick Hunt, acting professor of law at the UC Davis School of Law, has written at length on rating-agency reform in a number of published and forthcoming law-review articles. He also maintains a blog at http://ratingagencylawblog.wordpress.com. Although Congress has taken decisive action to reduce reliance on ratings, Hunt believes it missed opportunities to address conflicts of interest and increase accountability. Contact: John Patrick Hunt, UC Davis School of Law, (530) 752-5052 (office), or (530) 231-5523, jphunt@ucdavis.edu.

Commodities

Aaron Smith, a UC Davis professor of agricultural and resource Economics, studies the prices of agricultural, energy and industrial commodities. In particular, he is interested in what makes such prices move. Since June 2009, he has served as a consultant to the Office of the Chief Economist of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) on issues related to commodity price volatility. In his most recent work with the CFTC, Smith has sought to identify which traders in commodity futures markets have information about the future direction of prices and which traders tend to affect prices when they trade. Aaron Smith, Agricultural and Resource Economics, (530) 752-2138, adsmith@ucdavis.edu, http://asmith.ucdavis.edu.