John A. Haslem, professor emeritus of finance, the founding academic affairs dean and founding chair of the finance department at the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, passed away on Oct. 8, 2023.

John A. Haslem, professor emeritus of finance, is the author of a new, regular column in the Journal of Indexes entitled "The Professors Reading Room." The column provides a synopsis of recent research with implications for portfolio indexing. One of the first topics will be Smith School finance department Associate Professor Russ Wermers' very important bootstrapping analysis of mutual funds in the December 2006 issue of the Journal of Finance.

In his new book, Mutual Funds: Risk and Performance Analysis for Decision Making (Blackwell Publishers: Oxford, 2003), Smith School Emeritus Professor John A. Haslem teaches the rest of us how to evaluate and select mutual funds. Its knowledge that comes none too soon. According to the Investment Company Institute, by the end of the 20th century, more than 400 different companies were offering some 8,000 mutual funds, and 49 percent of American households were investing in them.