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 (2024), 37 (5), 1685-1728.  (WP Version)


Big Banks, Household Credit Access, and Intergenerational Economic Mobility 

Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (2024), 59 (6), 2933-2969.  (WP Version)


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.  (WP Version)


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

Financial Management (2021), 50 (1), 281-314.  (WP Version)

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-third of deals in the venture capital market involve a founder and investor from the same university. Venture capitalists are more likely to invest in, and place larger bets on, startups with founders from their alma mater. These deals are more likely to lead to IPOs post-funding. Using VC partner turnover, we show a causal link between education ties and funding likelihood. Marginal startups, identified using the supply of funding as an instrument, have better post-funding outcomes when the founder and VC share an alma mater. Our results imply that university connections facilitate information flow rather than diverting funds toward lower-quality startups.


Human Capital and Local Credit Supply: Evidence from the Mortgage Industry with Ruidi Huang, Sheridan Titman, and David Xu

Using comprehensive data on the locations of loan officers and their loan originations, we find that the majority of the US residential mortgage market remains local, despite developments in financial technology. However, the supply of loan officers is largely unresponsive to local mortgage demand shocks. This lack of responsiveness stems at least in part from asymmetric information about individual productivity, which restricts loan officers’ ability to relocate to high-demand locations through the labor market. Remote lending and increased loan officer workloads do not fully substitute for the supply of local loan officers. Our findings suggest that labor immobility can distort local credit supply and reduce capital allocation efficiency.


Audit Partners and Loan Loss Provisioning: Evidence from U.S. Bank Holding Companies with Gauri Bhat, Hemang Desai, Christoffer Koch, and Nitzan Tzur-Ilan

Using confidential data on audit partner names from 2006 to 2019 for bank holding companies (BHCs), we examine partners’ impact on loan loss provisioning. Using a fixed effects approach, we find some evidence that individual partners affect provisioning, especially at public BHCs and BHCs audited by large audit firms. However, these results do not obtain in the post-financial crisis period. We also examine the association between partner tenure and provisioning. We find that allowance is increasing in partner tenure, particularly for public BHCs and small BHCs. The result for small BHCs is obtained in the post-financial crisis period as well. Thus, partner heterogeneity is more likely to manifest during periods of high economic uncertainty, but otherwise, there seems to be consistency in approach to audits across partners within a firm. Our results also suggest that audit scrutiny increases as the partners stay longer with the engagement, especially for small BHCs.

Work in Progress

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

Resting Papers

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

Publications in Other Academic Fields

Investing in a New Role to Increase Timely Morning Discharges in the Inpatient Setting  with Yuliya Oumarbaeva-Malone, Kaitlyn McQuistion, Grace Quinn, and Paul Manicone  

Hospital Pediatrics (2025), 15 (1), 9-16.