Professor Bell, a native southerner, is an Assistant Professor in the Management Department at NJCU where he teaches business and commercial law related courses. He received a B.A. in Economics from Howard University (Washington, D.C), and a J.D from Tulane University Law School (New Orleans, La.), where he served on the Moot Court Board. His legal experience includes White & Case LLP (New York and London, UK) and King & Spalding, LLP (New York), where he has worked in Private Equity, Mergers & Acquisitions, and Debt Finance. Professor Bell's core research interest is interdisciplinary, focusing on understanding how law can advance the interests of society, and how society shapes law. Prior to entering law, he worked in Finance at both JP Morgan Chase (New York) and Credit Lyonnais (New York), gaining experience with private sector large and middle-market businesses, and financial institutions. 

For me, amongst the biggest benefits of working at NJCU is the diversity of the student population.  As an African-American educator, I think it is important (and gratifying) to pass along not only my knowledge of my discipline (Business Law subjects), but also to give tips on working in the real world. I’ve had some very good professional experiences, and to the extent I can try to help give minority students (and others) words of wisdom that will help them navigate the corporate/working world, I’m very happy to do so. 

My core interest is in interdisciplinary research. I have a current article under review by the American Journal of Law and Medicine (Boston University), titled “Machine Learning in Public Healthcare: A Focus on Design and Model Development to Evolve Policy and Regulation”.  Simply stated, I think this manuscript contributes to the existing literature by unraveling the so-called “black box” of machine learning as it is applied to public healthcare, and suggesting possible policy prescription within and amongst the several steps in building a machine learning algorithm for public healthcare, thus highlighting for a broad multidisciplinary audience where attention might be focused. The article discusses and analyzes some of the causes of some of the racial and socio-economic disparities experience in the government provision of healthcare during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to its discussion of racial and socio-economic disparities, this article is important to me because there is very limited legal scholarship discussing artificial intelligence and machine learning as related to healthcare. More frequently there is literature covering these applications as they relate to policing and financial credit scoring.  Since the healthcare domain is very unique, and the application of machine learning to this area is increasing at such a rapid pace, more directed scholarship is needed in this area. 

Another article that I am currently working on was selected for presentation as an extended abstract at Princeton University last April 2021. This article, “The Role of Inclusivity in the Evolution of Law and Policy to Accommodate Smart Sustainable Cities”, is very special to me, as I had to really learn about “Smart Sustainable Cities”. As it turns out, “Smart Cities” and “Sustainable Cities”, individually, each receive adequate treatment in the academic literature. However, the concept of “Smart Sustainable Cities” is an emerging interdisciplinary field. My focus in this article is to place emphasis on the transformation of traditional legal concepts in the socio-ecological context. There are environmental and socio-political aspects to this subject matter. In the extended abstract, I note that “the goal of inclusivity in such contexts is not only critical to the concerns of equity and fairness, especially to historically marginalized populations, but is a key determinant as to development of law and policy to accommodate the pace of innovation that smart sustainable cities represent”.  With this article I hope to invite scholars to make contributions with multidisciplinary approaches.   

Dr. Lukas Helikum’s (Accounting) paper "Causal Attribution, Benefits Sharing, and Earnings Management", was listed on SSRN's Top Ten download list for Behavioral & Experimental Accounting eJournal in November 2021.

Dr. Serdar Yayla’s (Marketing) paper “The role of market orientation, relational capital, and internationalization speed in foreign market exit and re-entry decisions under turbulent
conditions” was listed in Sousa et al. (2021) as one of the top ten articles devoted to "International Market Re-entry", a relatively new and emerging research area, based on its average citation score.

During the Fall 2021, professors Huijian Dong (Finance) and Nava Cohen (Accounting) presented their research in the Gothic Research Seminar Series. These seminars aim to enhance intellectual exchange among faculty and students by providing a forum to discuss research on business-related topics.

Dr. Huijian Dong joined NJCU this summer as the Associate Dean of the School of Business. Dr. Dong is an associate professor of finance at NJCU. His research interest lies in financial market analysis and higher education administration. On October 1, 2021, Dr. Dong presented his paper “Option Price Predictability, Splines, and Expanded Rationality” in which he and his co-authors suggest using the spline method to forecast option prices directly. The spline forecast model incorporates the illiquidity issue and avoids the vital pitfalls in the current leading option pricing techniques.

Dr. Nava Cohen is an associate professor of accounting at the School of Business at NJCU. Her research area is empirical archival, centered on how firms’ corporate social responsibility and charitable donations decisions affect their financial reporting. On October 15, 2021, Dr. Cohen presented her working paper “Charitable Alignment and Auditor-Client Contracting: An Exploratory Study” in which she and her co-authors examine the association between auditor-client charitable alignment (i.e., when an auditor and her client make corporate charitable donations to the same nonprofits), and several audit outcomes. Her results show that audit quality may be lower when there is an auditor-client charitable alignment which suggests a need for better monitoring of corporate charitable practices.