Associate Professor Yili Lian has been selected as Stanislaus State’s inaugural Ernie T. Gemperle endowed chair in finance fellow. Lian’s three-year appointment continues through 2024. 

“I am honored to be Stan State’s first Gemperle fellow,” Lian said. “I plan to use the funding for database and software purchases and research-related travel and collaboration. It will help me to expand my research during the next three years.” 

In a message announcing his appointment, College of Business Administration Dean Tomás Gómez-Arias said Lian’s work will focus on two areas: the connection between trade credits and customer-supplier relationships and monitoring the effect of institutional investors on inside trading profits in different settings. 

“The first project will study how customer firms use trade credits from supplier firms under different credit conditions,” Lian said. “I will test the causal relation under the bank deregulation in United States from the 1980s to 1990s. 

“The second project will study the role of institutional investors in insider trading. I will test whether institutional investors choose to monitor corporate insiders or compete with them by trading in the stock market.” 

He plans to present his findings at academic conferences and publish the results in finance journals. Prior to joining Stan State State’s Department of Accounting and Finance in August 2019, Lian served as a tenured associate professor at Pennsylvania State University, Scranton Campus. His research interests are empirical corporate finance and financial institutions. He received the Highly Commended Award twice from the Review of Accounting and Finance, first in 2017 and again in 2019. In 2012, he won the Best Doctoral Student Paper Award during the Southern Finance Association’s annual meeting.  

Lian earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of International Business and Economics in 2004 and a Master of Finance from Peking University in 2004. He completed his doctorate in finance from Baruch College and Graduate Center of the City University of New York in May 2013. He is grateful for the Gemperle family’s support for faculty research.   

The Ernie T. Gemperle endowed chair in finance fellow was established at Stan State through a gift from the Gemperle family and Gemperle Family Farms and is named for the family’s patriarch, who died in 2008.  

Gemperle and his late wife Annamarie were dedicated supporters of the University and its mission. In addition to making generous donations for scholarships that benefited scores of Stan State students, Ernie Gemperle served on the University’s Foundation Board.  

Gemperle Lecture Hall located in the Demergasso-Bava Hall is named in his honor. 

Born in Switzerland, Gemperle immigrated to the United States in 1949. He moved to Turlock in 1951 and established Gemperle Family Farms, which grew and evolved into one of the leading producers of organic and cage-free eggs in Northern California.