Associate Professor of Finance

Wisconsin School of Business


Email: briana.chang@wisc[.]edu


Research interest: Financial intermediation, Decentralized Trading, Search and matching


[CV] [Official UW-Madison Profolio]

Publications


Working Papers

  • Endogenous Market Making and Network Formation (jointly w/ Shengxing Zhang) R&R, Journal of Economic Theory

    • Abstract: We propose a dynamic model of the over-the-counter market that jointly determines traders' connections with prices and asset flows. In an environment where ex ante homogeneous traders face uncertainty of other’s trading needs, a multilayered hierarchical market structure emerges to allow traders to better target their counterparties over time. Traders at a higher tier are committed to providing immediacy to those at a lower tier and become more central. Not only does the model rationalize the highly concentrated market and lengthy intermediation chains, it also generates new predictions for dealer centrality and markups that are consistent with the micro-level data.


  • Sorting Out the Real Effects of Credit Supply (jointly w/ Harrison Hong, Matthieu Gomez) R&R, Journal of Financial Economics

    • Abstract: We document that banks which cut lending more during the Great Recession lent to riskier firms. To reconcile this evidence, we build a competitive matching model of bank-firm relationships. Riskier firms borrow from banks with lower holding costs or higher abilities to securitize. We use our sorting model to recover bank holding costs based on default probabilities and equilibrium loan rates. Our model attributes 60% of the Great Recession decline in corporate loans to higher bank holding costs or credit supply and 40% to elevated firm risks or credit demand. We interpret reduced-form panel regression estimates of the bank lending channel using our framework.


  • Financial Market Structure and Risk Concentration (jointly with Shengxing Zhang)

    • Abstract: We propose a model that jointly determines risk allocations and banks' bilateral trading networks. In the model, banks use their bilateral connections to either share or concentrate their risk exposures. Even when banks are ex-ante homogeneous and risk-averse, they may take risks collectively by concentrating risks on a small set of banks. Our framework highlights the possibility of a structural shift, which predicts discontinuous changes in aggregate risks and transaction prices. We use this framework to analyze the distribution of bank balance sheets and to evaluate the responses of the market structure to regulations


  • Hedging and Pricing Rent Risk with Search Frictions (jointly w/ Hyun-Soo Choi, Harrison Hong, Jeffrey Kubik)

    • Abstract: The desire of risk-averse households to hedge rent risk is thought to increase home ownership and prices. While evidence for the ownership implication is compelling, support for the price effect is mixed. We show that an important reason is search frictions. Rent risk reduces outside options, leading to less-picky buyers and worse home/buyer matches. This attenuates the rise in the price-to-rent ratio that would otherwise occur without frictions. Consistent with our model, a house remains on the market for fewer days when rent risk is higher. Accounting for frictions significantly increases the effect of rent risk on home prices.


  • A Search Theory of Sectoral Reallocation

    • Abstract: The paper contributes a theoretical framework to analyze how the labor market responds differently to aggregate and sectoral shocks in the presence of search frictions and imperfect mobility. In contrast to the previous literature, which views sectoral shocks as exogenous shocks on matching efficiency, the aggregate impacts of sectoral shocks are the endogenous outcome of the optimal hiring and moving decisions of firm and workers. It shows that, perhaps surprisingly, consistent with recent empirical findings, a pure sectoral shock will not affect the aggregate unemployment. Moreover, during the transition, the aggregate wage increases despite of the decrease in the aggregate productivity.


In Progress