RESEARCH
RESEARCH
My research interests are at the intersection of empirical corporate finance and municipal finance.
I am particularly interested in how municipal finance affects corporate financing and investment decisions.
Private Activity Bonds As Investment Subsidy: Evidence from the 1986 Cap on Bond Volumes, solo-authored [download]
I examine firms' investment response to the supply of private activity bonds (PABs) – a subsidy tool granting corporate beneficiaries access to the tax-exempt municipal bond market. I leverage the variation in PAB supply limits across states introduced by the 1986 Tax Reform. By documenting a significant positive investment effect, I show that higher PAB supply stimulates firm investment. Although PABs subsidize capital over labor, my results do not support input factor substitution, as I find a positive effect on employment. I exploit the random outcome of a lottery-based PAB distribution mechanism to show that states' project selection does not drive the results.
Awards: Best Paper Award at the Franco-German Fiscal Policy Seminar 2024, Best Doctoral Student Paper Award at the German Finance Association (DGF) Annual Meeting 2023
Presentations: Local Public Finance and Fiscal Federalism Around the World, ZEW Public Finance Conference 2025, AFFECT Workshop 2025, Franco-German Fiscal Policy Seminar 2024, AFA PhD Student Poster Session 2024, 12th Brookings Municipal Finance Conference, German Finance Association Doctoral Workshop 2023, NextGen Economics at the 7th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting on Economic Sciences
Tax-Subsidized Green Bonds and their Real Effects, solo-authored [draft available upon request]
This paper studies the use and corporate real effects of tax-subsidized green bonds, a fiscal policy tool that provides firms with a source of low-cost financing for green projects. Using a novel, large sample of tax-subsidized pollution control bonds financing pollution abatement facilities of U.S. public firms, I document that issuance is disproportionately concentrated among large firms, even within industries. Issuance of tax-subsidized green bonds increases when conventional bond financing becomes costly. Analyzing the high-interest rate period of the early 1980s, I find that issuing firms subsequently display an increase in output and R&D expenditures, highlighting potential positive economic aspects of tax-subsidized green investment when the costs for conventional financing are high.
Presentations: NBER Conference on Economics of Decarbonizing Industrial Production (scheduled), AEA 2025, CESifo Conference Energy & Climate Economics 2025
Municipal Bankruptcy and the Economic Costs of Financial Contagion, with Daniel Bias [download]
This paper examines whether one municipality's bankruptcy exposes other local governments to economic costs of financial contagion. To disentangle the bankruptcy’s effect from the general economic trend, we identify idiosyncratic bankruptcies using a narrative approach. We show that non-bankrupt municipalities issue less debt following the bankruptcy. To identify the economic consequences of the limited credit market access, we exploit ex-ante heterogeneity in local governments' maturity of long-term debt. We find that high fractions of maturing debt lead to lower government spending, as well as to lower tradable employment. Overall, our results suggest that bankruptcy as resolution mechanism deteriorates the development of other municipalities that rely on debt financing.
Awards: Best Poster Award, TUM SOM Research Fest 2020
Presentations: AFA PhD Student Poster Session 2022, EEA 2020, European Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society 2019, 9th Workshop on Banks and Financial Markets, German Finance Association Annual Meeting 2019, Finance Brown Bag Seminar at Goethe University, BGPE Research Workshop, Uppsala PhD Workshop in Public Economics, 13th RGS Doctoral Conference in Economics