Francine
Lafontaine
William Davidson Professor,
Business Economics
and Public Policy

PROFESSIONAL INFO
I am the William Davidson Professor of Business Economics and Public Policy at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. I am also Professor of Economics (courtesy) at the University of Michigan's Department of Economics. You can find out more about me, including my contact information, on my faculty profile page.

RESEARCH INTERESTS
I study Industrial Organization, Vertical Relationships, Contracting and Franchising, and Entrepreneurship. My research is mostly concerned with the application of advances in contract theory and vertical relationships to the analysis of franchising arrangements. I also study the effect of contracting practices on firm performance, as well as issues surrounding business creation and survival in retail and small-scale service industries more generally.

My book, The Economics of Franchising [amazon.com] (with Roger D. Blair) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2005. A new paperback edition is now available from Amazon.com. This book is currently being translated to Chinese. I also edited Franchise Contracting and Organization [amazon.com], published by Edward Elgar Publishing.

Here is my vita in PDF format.

TEACHING
I am on sabbatical for the 2012/2013 academic year, spending the Fall visiting at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and the Winter and Spring semesters at the MIT Sloan School of Management. However, in Winter 2013, I will be teaching BE591 in the GMBA program in Osaka, Japan and co-teaching, with Valerie Suslow, the Economics for Entrepreneurs course in the new Master of Entrepreneurship program.