Research

Job Market Paper

Does DeFi Democratize Access to Financial Services?

Blockchain-based decentralized Finance (DeFi) aims to promote financial inclusion by removing centralized intermediaries and providing direct services to users. This paper investigates whether Decentralized Financial (DeFi) lending markets, one of the largest DeFi applications, provide equal access. DeFi lending operates similarly to margin lending or repo transactions. Most borrowers use cryptocurrencies as collateral to borrow stablecoins, which are cryptocurrencies pegged to the US dollar. Using data at the account level, I find that highly leveraged borrowers who pledge low collateral relative to their loan amounts are constrained by collateral requirements. After platforms relax collateral requirements, highly leveraged borrowers increase borrowing and leverage further. Overall, this paper suggests that stringent collateral requirements in DeFi lending restrict access to borrowers who are already asset-rich.

Presentations: Penn State University, 2024 INFORMS, 2024 FMA Annual Meeting (Special Presentations - Rising Stars of Fintech), Junior Academic Research Seminars, University of Sydney Business Financing and Banking Research Workshop, 2024 CBER Ph.D. Symposium, UCSB ECON DeFi Seminar 

Working Papers

Biodiversity and Local Asset Values, with Jess Cornaggia, Peter Iliev, and Jennifer Liang

This paper examines the relationship between biodiversity and local asset values. We find that house prices and agricultural land values increase with biodiversity loss at the property level, likely reflecting development-driven monetization. In contrast, at the county level, greater species richness correlates with higher asset values, indicating that regional biodiversity is viewed as an amenity. Importantly, the positive association between biodiversity loss and property value weakens over time, while the value premium for regional biodiversity strengthens. These findings indicate biodiversity is increasingly valued as natural capital in real estate markets, with implications for conservation policy and sustainable development.

Proposal selected for the Special Issue on Biodiversity and Natural Resource Finance at the Review of Finance.

Presentations: Penn State University*,  2024 Biodiversity Finance Research Workshop*

An Anatomy of Cryptocurrency Sentiment, with Mehmet Canayaz, Charles Cao, and Giang Nguyen

In this paper, we investigate the impact of market sentiment on cryptocurrency returns. To accomplish this, we use a novel dataset that captures a multitude of attitudes, moods, and emotions extracted from a vast amount of news and social media content. Our findings indicate that social media sentiment significantly predicts crypto returns, while sentiment from news media does not. Additionally, we observe that fundamental events play a role in shaping sentiment, but market exuberance---sentiment unrelated to fundamental events---is a strong and robust predictor of returns. Furthermore, we find that market exuberance is positively related to momentum return but does not positively predict volatility. This suggests that sentiment influences returns through price perception and demand shocks rather than the risk premium channel. Overall, our research highlights the importance of sentiment in understanding and predicting cryptocurrency market dynamics. 

Presentations: Penn State University, 2023 CMU-PSU-Pitt Finance Conference, 2023 Early Career Women in Finance Conference, 2023 FMA Annual Meeting, 2024 EasternFA Annual Meeting, CIREQ-CMP Econometrics Conference*, 2024 WFA Meeting, 2025 MFA Annual Meeting

Media: Les Affaires, COINTELEGRAPH.COM, BitcoinInsider.org, Crypto News Flash, Blockworks 

Work in Progress 

Student Debt and the Cinderella Effect, with Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly Cornaggia, and Han Xia

Presentations: 2023 Financial Research Association (Early Ideas Presentation)*, 2024 Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making (Poster Session)

Cryptomining and Local Economy, with Liu Ee Chia

Presentations: 2024 FMA Annual Meeting (New Ideas Session)

Grant: Smeal Small Research Grant Fall 2024

​(* Presented by coauthors)