The Finance Professor Teaching an Early Morning Class

Abstract

A broad literature affirms the compromised performance of many people in early-morning settings. How does this affirmation
manifest itself in the academic environment in general and the finance classroom in particular? We extend the work of disciplines
outside the business school and find a need for the finance instructor to anticipate special needs for the early morning class; students
in 8:00 classes, relative to 9:30 classes, underperform, and this underperformance is more pronounced for those with jobs. We
provide clear evidence of the better performance of the student in the later class that has no outside employment, and extend these
findings to a new set of guidelines for use in early morning classes.