Research Interests:
FinTech, Competition, Ethical Behavior of Economic Agents, Labor Markets, Economic Development and Public Policy.
Current Research:
Specifically, I have research projects that study the impact of robo-advisors on the financial advisory labor market, the effect of competition on the misconduct behavior of financial advisors and, the effect of improved creditors' rights on bank-firm relationship.
Future Research:
I am exploring to study the impact of trust in funding for start-ups, the effect of R & D Tax credits on the labor market, and the possibility of financial inclusivity through entrepreneurship in a developing economy.
Submitted to Journal:
Kumar Ishitha, "Evolution of Financial Advisory Market with the Advent of Robo-advisors".
Working Papers:
Kumar Ishitha, "Impact of Robo-advisors on the Labor Market for Financial Advisors."
I employ various data gathering techniques to study this research question. I obtain hand-collected data, use publicly available data and finally use web-scraping to achieve my objective. I take instrumental variable approach to study this research question. I find that robo-advisors and financial advisors are complements. This complementarity can be explained by the expansion in market for financial services through (1) an increase in financial advisors at firms that directly compete with robo-advisors in terms of services provided (relative to the rest of the firms) and (2) an increase in investor-level demand for financial advisors. I also find that the observed increase in the number of financial advisors is due to a reduction in separations and an increase in hirings. This is associated with an increase in the average experience of a financial advisor with no effect on the misconduct behavior of a financial advisor at the firm.
Best Paper Award at Southern Finance Association.
Presented at: Southwestern Finance Association - 62nd Annual Meeting, Houston, 2023.
Eastern Finance Association - 59th Annual Meeting, Asheville, 2023.
Southern Finance Association - 63rd Annual Meeting, Fajardo, Puerto Rico, 2023.
Scheduled to present at: SFS Cavalcade North America, Georgia State University, 2024.
Kumar Ishitha , "Competition and Misconduct Behavior: Evidence from Financial Advisory Industry."
I construct a competition measure using an exogenous shock that affects both supply of financial advisors and demand for financial advisors. Using this plausibly exogenous competition measure, I find that a one unit standard deviation increase in competition measure increases the probability of misconduct complaint by 0.3\%. Further, an increase in competition increases the total number of complaints at the financial advisor level. I also find a reduction in the probability of termination after misconduct complaint with increase in competition. I examine the severity of misconduct complaints with increase in competition, and find that the observed results are driven by increase in misconduct complaints with no significant material allegations.
Presented at: Southwestern Finance Association - 63rd Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, 2024.
Athira A, Kumar Ishitha, Vishnu K Ramesh and Anish Shankar Menon, "Creditor Rights Protection: Role of Bank-Firm Relationship in Distressed Firms' Loan Needs."
This study is based in the context of India. We study the impact of improved protection to creditors' rights on the ability of distressed firms to obtain loans. We exploit the passage of Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) reform in 2016 as a plausible exogenous shock for this study. We find that passage of IBC did not improve the probability for a distressed firm to obtain loans by forming new bank relationships. We also find that for the distressed firms with existing bank relationships there is an increase in (1) probability of obtaining loans, and (2) amount of loan obtained. These results indicate that the benefits of IBC accrue to those distressed firms with already existing bank relationships.