Aidan Hathaway

I am an economics Ph.D. candidate at the University of Alabama. My research examines how lender specialization affects borrower outcomes and how the mix of small and large depositors shapes bank fragility. These questions are motivated by my background in corporate and bank treasury.  

My job market paper, Home Field Advantage: Local Credit Specialization and Demand Capture, uses the 2005 ethanol mandate, which sharply raised demand for corn, to estimate what an informed lender is worth to borrowers. Farm earnings rose 9.5% more per standard deviation of local credit specialization, and the evidence is consistent with informed lenders guiding how borrowers use credit rather than expanding it. Lending volumes alone may therefore understate what community-bank consolidation costs borrowers.

I received the 2026 Outstanding Research by a Doctoral Student Award, given by UA's economics department to one Ph.D. student each year. I was named a 2026 Community Banking Research Conference Emerging Scholar and have published in the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. For my teaching, I received the 2025–26 Harold Elder Economics Graduate Student Teaching Award, awarded annually to the best graduate student instructor. 

Before graduate school, I spent seven years on both sides of the banking relationship, with treasury roles spanning funding, liquidity, and FX risk at IBM, Citizens Financial Group, and Kyndryl.

I am on the 2026–27 academic job market and can be reached at abhathaway@crimson.ua.edu.