Publications

Can Human Capital Explain Income-Based Disparities in Financial Services? with Ruidi Huang, James Linck, and Chris Parsons

Review of Financial Studies, Forthcoming.


The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders with Scott Frame, Ruidi Huang, Erica Jiang, Yeonjoon Lee, Will Liu, and Adi Sunderam

Journal of Finance, Forthcoming.


Gender Bias in Promotions: Evidence from Financial Institutions with Ruidi Huang and Darius Miller

Review of Financial Studies, Forthcoming.


Big Banks, Household Credit Access, and Intergenerational Economic Mobility 

Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Forthcoming.  (SSRN Link)


Racial Disparities in the Auto Loan Market  with Alex Butler and James Weston  

Review of Financial Studies (2023), 36 (1), 1-41. Editor's Choice and Lead Article.  (SSRN Link)


 Advertising, Investor Attention, and Stock Prices: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

Financial Management (2021), 50 (1), 281-314.  (SSRN Link)

Working Papers   (* indicates presentation by coauthor) 


Government Litigation Risk and the Decline in Low-Income Mortgage Lending with Scott Frame, Kristopher Gerardi,  Billy Xu, and Lawrence Zhao 

We study the effect of Department of Justice lawsuits in the 2010s against large lenders for alleged fraud in the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage insurance program. The suits led to over $5 billion in settlements and caused targeted banks and their peers to precipitously exit the FHA market. Difference-in-differences and triple differences tests exploiting geographic variation in exposure to exiting banks show a 20% reduction in FHA lending in heavily exposed areas. This reduction was not associated with improved underwriting standards or lower default rates. Large banks’ FHA exit has significantly reduced low-income households’ overall access to mortgage credit.


Alumni Networks in Venture Capital Financing with Jon Garfinkel, Ilya Strebulaev, and Emmanuel Yimfor

One in three deals in the venture capital market involves an investor and founder from the same alma mater. We show these connections facilitate VC funding and improve outcomes. Venture capitalists tilt their portfolios toward startups from their alma mater and place larger bets on these firms. Results are stronger when information about founder abilities is less clear, and connected investments outperform the same investors’ unconnected investments. Tests exploiting alumni interactions from college football games and VC-partner turnover suggest a causal relationship between connections and funding. Overall, our evidence suggests information benefits from education networks in the venture capital market.


The Effects of Audit Partners on Financial Reporting: Evidence from US Bank Holding Companies with Gauri Bhat, Hemang Desai, Scott Frame, and Christoffer Koch

This paper uses confidential data on audit engagement partner names from regulatory filings of bank holding companies (BHC) to investigate whether partners display individual style that affects the financial reporting of the BHCs. We focus on loan loss provisioning and construct an audit partner-BHC matched panel data set that enables us to track partners across different BHCs over time. We employ two empirical approaches to investigate partner style. The first approach tests whether partner fixed effects are statistically significant in loan loss provisioning models. The second approach tests whether a partner’s history of loan loss provisioning predicts future practices for the same partner. Our empirical evidence does not support systematic differences in loan loss provisioning across audit engagement partners, suggesting that the audit firm’s standards and quality control constrain personal partner style.

Work in Progress

Project on Intergenerational Mobility  with Connor Cole, Ruidi Huang, Corbin Miller, and Barton Willage


Project on Mortgage Lending  with Ruidi Huang, Sheridan Titman, and David Xu

Resting Papers

Credit Where Credit is Due: Drivers of Subprime Credit  with Elizabeth Berger and Alex Butler