Anthony Waikel

PhD Candidate

University of Georgia

Terry College of Business

Collateral or Constraint? Credit Consequences of Parents Cosigning with Children,

with Hua Kiefer (link)

Under review

Parental cosigning on mortgages for their adult children is a rapidly growing form of intergenerational support utilized to help overcome declining housing affordability. Using unique administrative data linking mortgage records to comprehensive credit reports, we investigate its financial consequences. While parental cosigning acts as effective collateral on the home, facilitating homeownership and reducing mortgage default risk, it simultaneously imposes a constraint on the child's broader financial portfolio. Intergenerational borrowers face higher interest rates and lower refinancing rates. They also acquire more expensive homes, often in areas with weaker socioeconomic indicators, which exacerbates liquidity strain. This strain, combined with a prioritization of the mortgage and a weak starting position, leads to negative spillovers where intergenerational borrowers exhibit higher delinquency rates on non-mortgage debts that worsen post-origination. Parental guarantees open the door to homeownership but transfer hidden risk to other consumer lenders.

Figure on the left: Credit card delinquency around mortgage origination for those who cosign with a parent (green line) and those who cosign with a spouse (blue line).

Presentations: FDIC CFR Seminar (2025), Interagency Risk Quantification Forum (2025), Southern Finance Association Annual Meeting (2025), Financial Management Association Annual Meeting (2025), Federal Reserve Supervisory Research Forum (2025)

Lending to Internet Strangers: Screening and Monitoring under Borrower Anonymity,

with Filipe Correia and António Martins (link)

Under review

We study online informal lending among anonymous individuals conducted without contracts, collateral, or legal enforcement. Using data on requests, funding, performance, and matched surveys, we show that pseudonymous identities build trust through repeat borrowing and reputation through verified repayment. Higher prices substitute credit history for first-time borrowers, increasing the chances of funding. Within funded loans, we observe a positive price-default gradient. Overlap in borrowers’ and lenders’ online activity predicts both funding and repayment, suggesting that shared culture substitutes for geographic or social proximity. Connectedness matters for ex-ante screening rather than ex-post monitoring. This market intermediates millions, and profits concentrate among few lenders.

Figure on the left: on the top, average lender returns sequentially removing the top lenders. On the bottom, default rate by decile of promised interest.

Presentations: Future Finance and Economics Association Conference (2023), Southwest Finance Association Annual Meeting (2024, coauthor), Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making (2024, coauthor), Brazilian Econometrics Meeting (2024, coauthor), American Finance Association Annual Meeting (PhD Poster Session 2023), FDIC Consumer Research Symposium (2024), Eastern Finance Association Annual Meeting (2025, coauthor), FDIC Bank Research Conference (2025)

Incentivizing Retail Traders: Evidence from Daily High-Water Marks on a Social Trading Platform (link)

Fintech platforms have influenced consumer behavior and introduced `gamified' interfaces that alter retail investor attention. A new innovation in this space is social trading platforms, which allow retail investors to manage investable portfolios and pair that visibility with performance pay that looks like an institutional high water mark contract. I study a social trading platform that pays retail portfolio managers a cash bonus every day their fund closes above its previous high closing point (high water mark). Using 3.6 million trades from 5,000 funds, I employ a differences-in-differences design around each bonus to show that achieving a bonus generates a one day return spike of 1.6 percentage points above the previous day, but these gains immediately disappear. This spike is costly and managers create it by selling recent winners to lock in the bonus, but sacrifice future upside. A counterfactual analysis reveals that 63% of funds would realize higher alpha and 57% would collect additional bonuses by not trading at all. On average, traders destroy 2.5% of fund value around each event. The evidence shows that daily high water mark incentives draw retail traders' attention, amplify short term trading focus, and leave both traders and their investors worse off.

Figure on the left: Differences-in-Differences result around achieving a performance bonus.

Presentations: FDIC Internal Seminar (2024), Southwest Finance Association Annual Meeting (2025), Southern Finance Association Annual Meeting (2025)

Fund Manager Skill of Retail Investors,

with Daniel Rettl and Arjun Goel

News Reactions and Information Networks Among Retail Traders,

with Miguel Puertas

The Role of Collateral in Credit Card Markets,

with Hua Kiefer

Presentations: Financial Management Association Early Ideas (2025)

Online Financing without FinTech: Evidence from Online Informal Loans during the Pandemic, 

with Filipe Correia and António Martins

Journal of Economics and Business (link)

We present the first comprehensive dataset on an online informal micro-lending community. These informal loans are small, short duration, and high-cost. Using our unique micro data, and the Covid-19 pandemic as a laboratory, we uncover different types of information contained on loan terms and on the narratives of market participants. First, loan terms reflect the aggregate economic context of borrowers and lenders. Second, narratives among market participants contain additional and timely information about aggregate and individual borrower circumstances. Third, lenders imperfectly screen on both loan terms and narrative information. These findings highlight the role of data in FinTech. Transparency on micro-loans can improve the efficiency of the credit market, democratizing access to finance for borrowers, while protecting lenders. 

Figure on the left: term structure of interest rates of informal loans.