Yao Zeng
Assistant Professor of Finance
Cynthia and Bennett Golub Faculty Scholar (2023-25)Â Â Â Â
The Wharton School, University of PennsylvaniaÂ
Faculty Research Fellow (Asset Pricing), NBER
CV (June 2026) | Google Scholar     Â
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I work at the intersection of asset pricing, corporate finance, and financial intermediation. A unifying theme of my research is liquidity: how financial institutions and markets provide it, how technology reshapes it, and when it creates fragility.Â
My work studies liquidity in three connected forms: 1) liquidity insurance provided by banks, mutual funds, ETFs, and private credit funds; 2) informational liquidity produced by data-driven lenders and platforms; and 3) money-like liquidity created by banks, stablecoins, and new payment technologies. Across these settings, I examine how the rise of non-banks and new technologies is reshaping money, banking, and payments, with implications for financial stability, monetary policy, and macroeconomic risk.
My overview article in the IMF's Finance & Development and my panel discussion at the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings provide accessible summaries of this research agenda.
Publications
"Bank Debt, Mutual Fund Equity, and Swing Pricing in Liquidity Provision," with Yiming Ma and Kairong Xiao
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Mentioned in the SEC's final rule on Money Market Fund Reforms
Mentioned in the SEC's proposed rule on Open-End Fund Liquidity Risk Management Programs and Swing Pricing
Mentioned in the SEC's proposed rule on Money Market Fund Reforms
Mentioned in the Financial Stability Board's Assessment of the Effectiveness of Recommendations on Liquidity Mismatch in Open-Ended Funds
Media Mentions: Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation
"Stablecoin Runs and the Centralization of Arbitrage," with Yiming Ma and Anthony Lee Zhang
Review of Financial Studies, forthcoming
Mentioned in the IMF's 2024 Global Financial Stability Report
Mentioned in the IMF's 2025 Monetary and Capital Markets Departmental Paper
Mentioned in the New York Fed's November 2024 Economic Policy Review
Mentioned in the U.S. Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee's 2025 Digital Money Report
Mentioned in the BIS's 2025 Annual Economic Report
Mentioned in the ECB's April 2026 Macroprudential Bulletin
Media Mentions: Financial Times, Forbes, Chicago Booth Review (1), Chicago Booth Review (2), Columbia Business School Newsroom, NPR Planet Money (1), NPR Planet Money (2)
"What Drives Money Competition: Comparative Advantage in Payments versus Reserves," with Itay Goldstein and Ming Yang
American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, 116: 439-45, May 2026.
Media Mentions: Central Banking
"FinTech Lending and Cashless Payments," with Pulak Ghosh and Boris Vallee
Journal of Finance, 81(2): 1053-101, April 2026.
Media Mentions: Knowledge@Wharton
"Steering a Ship in Illiquid Waters: Active Management of Passive Funds," with Naz Koont, Yiming Ma, and Lubos Pastor
Review of Financial Studies, 38(10): 2887-935, October 2025.
Mentioned in the New York Fed's Liberty Street Economics
Media Mentions: Financial Times (1), Financial Times (2), Barron's, Knowledge@Wharton, Chicago Booth Review, Becker Friedman Institute, ETF Stream
"Mutual Fund Liquidity Transformation and Reverse Flight to Liquidity," with Yiming Ma and Kairong Xiao
Review of Financial Studies, 35(10): 4674-711, October 2022.
Replicated for a sample of global funds in the IMF's 2022 Global Financial Stability Report
Mentioned in the SEC's final rule on Money Market Fund Reforms
Mentioned in the SEC's proposed rule on Open-End Fund Liquidity Risk Management Programs and Swing Pricing
Mentioned in the SEC's proposed rule on Money Market Fund Reforms
Mentioned in the Federal Reserve's November 2021 Financial Stability Report
Mentioned by New York Fed Executive Vice President Lorie K. Logan in her remarks on Treasury Market Liquidity and Early Lessons from the Pandemic Shock
Mentioned by Under Secretary of U.S. Treasury Nellie Liang in her remarks at the Global Banking and Finance Conference
"Silence is Safest: Information Disclosure When the Audience's Preferences are Uncertain," with Philip Bond
Journal of Financial Economics, 145(1): 178-93, July 2022.
Media Mentions: Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog
"Mutual Funds as Venture Capitalists? Evidence from Unicorns," with Sergey Chernenko and Josh Lerner
Review of Financial Studies, 34(5): 2362-410, May 2021. Code to Download Data
Media Mentions: Reuters, Bloomberg (Matt Levine's Money Stuff Column), Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, Boston Globe, Citywire, MoFo Jumpstarter
"Marketplace Lending: A New Banking Paradigm?" with Boris Vallee
Review of Financial Studies, 32(5): 1939-82, May 2019. Replication Code and Data
Media Mentions: HBS Working Knowledge, PYMTS.com
"Financing Entrepreneurial Production: Security Design with Flexible Information Acquisition," with Ming Yang
Review of Financial Studies, 32(3): 819-63, March 2019. Editor's Choice.
"Multi-Agent Inference in Social Networks: A Finite Population Learning Approach," with Jianqing Fan and Xin Tong
Journal of the American Statistical Association, 110, Theory and Methods: 149-58, April 2015.
Working Papers
"The Effect of Instant Payments on the Banking System: Liquidity Transformation and Risk-Taking," with Ding Ding, Rodrigo Gonzalez, and Yiming Ma
Media Mentions: Knowledge@Wharton, Central Banking, Valor Econômico
"Integrating Fragmented Networks: Interoperability in Money and Payments," with Alex Copestake, Divya Kirti, and Sole Martinez Paria
Media Mentions: Knowledge@Wharton, Devdiscourse
"Payments, Reserves, and Financial Fragility," with Itay Goldstein and Ming Yang
Media Mentions: Central Banking
"Tracing the Impact of Payment Convenience on Deposits: Evidence from Depositor Activeness," with Xu Lu and Yang Song
Media Mentions: Knowledge@Wharton
Previously circulated as "The Making of an Alert Depositor: How Payment and Interest Drive Deposit Dynamics"
"ETF Arbitrage under Liquidity Mismatch," with Kevin Pan
Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Finance
Arthur Warga Award for the Best Paper in Fixed Income, SFS Finance Cavalcade (North America)
Finalist of the ECB Research Prize in memory of Ieke van den Burg
Mentioned by SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson, Jr. in his Statement on Proposed Rules Regarding Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs)
Media Mentions: Bloomberg (Matt Levine's Money Stuff Column), ETF Stream (Interview), ETF Stream (2), Bloomberg (2), NBER Digest, Financial Times (1), Financial Times (2), Washington Post, DTCC, Alpha Architect, Absolut Research
"Coordination and Fragility in Liquidity Provision," with Ming Yang
Revise and Resubmit, Review of Financial Studies
"A Dynamic Theory of Mutual Fund Runs and Liquidity Management"
Revise and Resubmit, Review of Financial Studies, invited submission
First Prize for the Best Finance Theory Job Market Paper, Finance Theory Group
Trefftzs Award for the Best Student Paper, WFA
Cubist Systematic Strategies Ph.D. Candidate Award for Outstanding Research, WFA
Mentioned in the SEC's final rule on Money Market Fund Reforms
Mentioned in the SEC's proposed rule on Open-End Fund Liquidity Risk Management Programs and Swing Pricing
Mentioned in the SEC's proposed rule on Money Market Fund Reforms
Media Mentions: Bloomberg, WSJ, Risk.net, Money, Banking, and Financial Markets
Book Chapters and Invited Contributions
Finance & Development, 62(3): 18-23, September 2025, International Monetary Fund
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