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I am an assistant professor of Finance at Erasmus University Rotterdam. My research interests include corporate finance, financial intermediaries, inequality and social capital.
 

Contact information

 

Erasmus University Rotterdam

Erasmus School of Economics

Department of Business Economics

Burgemeester Oudlaan 50, H14-13

PO Box 1738 3000 DR Rotterdam

The Netherlands

Phone    +31 10 4081429

 

Curriculum Vitae

 

CV

 

Working papers/ work in progress

 

"The Dark Side of Social Capital? Battles and Mortgage Lending" 


I study how a shock in culture and trust in the past still affects mortgage lending today. More specifically, I investigate the long run effects of the American Civil War, a defining event for culture in American history, on current mortgage lending approval between 2005 and 2011. Using a spatial regression discontinuity design, exploiting the random occurrences of battles during the Civil War, I find that location matters for credit extension: Being located in a county in which a battle took place fosters the probability of loan approval. However, applicants from minority groups, such as African Americans, have a significant lower probability to obtain a mortgage loan in counties where a battlefield during the Civil War was located compared to similar applicants in adjacent non-battle counties. Conditional upon approval they also receive lower loan amounts. I show that a channel through which this battle effect persists is culture: Counties in which soldiers actively fought during the Civil War show higher levels of social capital today. Additionally, I find that remembrances of Civil War battles are important for the persistency of local social capital: Those battle counties that actively remember through re-enactment groups have even higher social capital today compared to those battle counties that do not. Moreover, applicants from minority groups have a significant lower probability to see their application currently being approved in these counties compared to minority applicants from battle counties that do not actively remember through such groups. Furthermore, conditional upon approval, they are also granted a lower loan amount, suggesting a possible ‘dark side’ of social capital. 


 

"Household Inequality, Entrepreneurial Dynamism and Corporate Financing", joint with Fabio Braggion and Steven Ongena

 
Economic theories provide conflicting hypotheses on how wealth inequality affects entrepreneurial dynamism and corporate financing. To empirically investigate its impact, we construct local measures of household wealth inequality based on financial rents, home equity, and 1880 farm land. We identify its effects on entrepreneurship by instrumenting it with land distribution under the 1862 Homestead Act or around US States removal of “death taxes”. Wealth inequality decreases firm entry and exit across MSAs, and is associated with a deterioration of credit, schooling, and justice. New businesses also create fewer jobs and income per capita consequently grows slower.


"Monetary policy and asset prices: Identifying a causal relationship", joint with Narly Dwarkasing


Assessing the impact of monetary policy and asset prices is a challenging task for two reasons. Firstly policy decisions are endogenous and secondly numerous factors drive both monetary policy and asset prices. In this paper we try to identify a causal relationship where changes in the discount rate affect asset prices. Looking at Britain in the period 1871-1913 and exploiting the fact that Britain was on the Gold Standard, we are able to construct an instrumental variable to address problems arising from endogeneity. We argue that the number of gold rushes can serve as an instrumental variable for the discount rate as they are an unexpected windfall in the gold supply and hence serve as an exogenous shock to the money supply, translating to a cut in the discount rate. Instrumenting the discount rate with the number of goldrushes, allows us to directly test for the effect that monetary policy can have on asset prices.
 
 

"Understanding depositor behavior: The effect of political uncertainty on depositor withdrawals"


This paper investigates the effect of political uncertainty on depositor behaviour. Using unique depositor-level data of a bank situated in a Latin-American country that was characterized by large political uncertainty, we look at how this uncertainty affected depositors and their withdrawing behaviour. Specifically we look at how depositor behaviour was affected around the months of the election of a new president. Interestingly, one of the candidates running for presidency, and whom eventually also won was criticised for inappropriate past behaviour such as engaging in criminal activities including illegal drug trade and first degree murder. We document that measured over a 6-month event window the average depositor withdrew 69% of its deposit account in the month following the presidential victory. This effect was even more pronounced for deposits held in the countries own currency compared to deposits held in foreign currencies such as U.S. dollars or Euro’s.