Merle Erickson

Merle Erickson is Professor of Accounting at the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Professor Erickson teaches “Taxes and Business Strategy” at Booth and has taught the course for more than twenty-five years. He has published numerous articles in a variety of top academic journals, and from 2005-2011, he served as a co-editor of the Journal of Accounting Research.

Over the course of his career, he has consulted on complex GAAP and tax accounting issues (e.g., debt versus equity, accounting for mergers, acquisitions and divestitures [e.g., spin-offs, leveraged partnerships, reverse Morris Trust transactions]) in a variety of contexts (e.g., bankruptcy, various private equity transactions, tax receivable agreements, tax sharing agreements, shareholder disputes, partnership and LLC arrangements, and various types of tax advantaged transactions). His clients have included, among others, the U.S. Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, Fortune 500 companies in various industries, international financial institutions, private equity firms, law firms, accounting firms, and individual taxpayers. He has also assisted corporations with SEC, IRS and whistleblower investigations.

Prior to entering academia, he assisted the U.S. Government in its prosecution of the Lincoln Saving & Loan case. He subsequently published an academic article and teaching case relating to the audit failure associated with the Lincoln Saving & Loan case. That teaching case has been used by the Big 4 to train junior auditors.

He has been given several awards for his research and teaching. In addition to teaching graduate students at Chicago Booth, Erickson has taught courses to Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, General Electric Capital Corporation, Baker McKenzie, Andersen Consulting, Accenture, CareerBuilder, and the IWI (Investments and Wealth Institute) among others. He was named one of BusinessWeek's Outstanding Faculty at the University of Chicago. He is the faculty director of the Booth Mergers and Acquisitions course for Executives, and is the also the faculty director of the Booth Certified Private Wealth Advisor (CPWA) program.

Erickson earned a bachelor's degree in accounting from Rockhurst College in 1987, an MBA in 1989 from Arizona State University, and a PhD in accounting from the University of Arizona in 1996. He joined the Chicago Booth faculty in 1996. 

In addition to his scholarly activities, Erickson is an avid fisherman. His angling pursuits have taken him from the pristine wilderness lakes of northern Canada to some of the remotest stretches of the Great Barrier Reef. He received the Angler Award from the Billfish Foundation in 2003 for catching and releasing the most striped marlin worldwide that year.