Working Papers
R&R, the Review of Financial Studies
(Former Title: The Adoption of Artificial Intelligence by Venture Capitalists)
Finalist BlackRock’s Applied Research Award, 2022
European Finance Association Doctoral Tutorial Best Paper Prize, 2022
Main Presentations: GSU-RFS Fintech Conference 2023; Future of Financial Information Conference 2023; SFS Cavalcade NA 2023; GSU CEAR-Finance Conference 2023; Columbia Private Equity Conference 2023; HEC Paris Entrepreneurship Workshop 2022; WEFI Workshop Fall 2022; European Finance Association 2022
I study how the increased use of data technologies, such as machine learning, by financial intermediaries affect capital allocation, in the context of startup financing by venture capitalists (VCs). I show that VCs' adoption of data technologies can shift their investments and have real effects on the financing of innovation.
Main Presentations: NBER Big Data and Securities Markets Fall 2023; EWFC 2024; WFA 2024; EFA 2024; AFA 2025
We show that the availability of alternative data diminishes the stock picking abilities of active mutual funds, especially those relying on traditional expertise, indicating the potential displacement of high-skill workers in finance.
R&R, the Review of Financial Studies
Geneva Institute for Wealth Management (GIWM) Research Award 2024
Main Presentations: NBER Household Finance SI 2024; FIRS 2024; Georgia Tech - Atlanta Fed Household Finance Conference 2024; Annual UIC Finance Conference 2024; AFA 2025
We show that manipulating financial advisors’ information can help mitigate investors’ biases, exploiting a natural experiment at a large brokerage firm. Removing the information available to advisors regarding clients' paper gains or losses leads to reduced disposition effect among highly-advised investors.
Best Paper, 7th SUERF/UniCredit Foundation Research Prize, 2019
Main Presentations: World Symposium on Investment Research 2021; Midwest Finance Association Conference 2021; Eastern Finance Association Meeting 2021; European Winter Meetings of the Econometric Society 2020; EUROFIDAI-ESSEC Paris December Finance Meeting 2020
I establish that the mobility of fund managers across firms improves the match between capital and skill in the mutual fund industry, suggesting that labor mobility plays a role in improving the allocation of capital within the mutual fund industry.
Financial Product Incentives to Differentiate: Evidence from Mutual Funds (with Anastasia Buyalskaya and Tianhao Yao)
Main Presentations: AFA 2024; Rotterdam School of Management Professional Asset Management Conference 2023; Research in Behavioral Finance Conference 2022; European Economic Association 2022; Future of Financial Information Conference 2022; FMA European Conference 2022; European Winter Meetings of the Econometric Society 2021
We provide evidence that low-performing mutual funds strategically use product differentiation, reflected in fund prospectuses, to compete for customers by offering more niche products. We establish a causal link between low quality and increased differentiation exploiting the issuance of Morningstar ratings.
Do Employees Care about ESG? Evidence from Employee Share Plans (with Marie Brière and François Derrien)
Featured in the Financial Times
Main Presentations: UN PRI Academic Network Conference 2022; Corporate Finance Day 2022; Workshop in Corporate Finance and Governance CUNEF 2022
We show that firms’ ESG behavior affects employees’ investments in their employer’s stock, exploiting unique data on French firm-sponsored savings plans. Following incidents in the “Social” category, employees become significantly less likely to buy their employer’s stock, an effect primarily driven by incidents directly affecting employee working conditions.
Publication
Causal Effects of Closing Businesses in a Pandemic (with Jean-Noël Barrot, Basile Grassi and Julien Sauvagnat)
Journal of Financial Economics, 2024
We study the effects on both economic and health outcomes of mandatory business closures implemented in response to the Covid-19, and discuss the assumptions under which the health benefits exceed their associated economic costs.