Publications 

Inflation, Monetary Policy, and Portfolio Decisions of US Households, with Yosef Bonaparte, George Korniotis, and Alok Kumar. 2024. Management Science.


Taxing the disposition effect: The impact of tax awareness on investor behavior, with William Bazley and Jordan Moore. 2022. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. 

Working Papers

The Inflation Gamble, with Yosef Bonaparte, George Korniotis, and Alok Kumar

This paper identifies a new link between inflation and asset prices. We conjecture that lottery-type investments become attractive to investors when inflation rises, as they attempt to mitigate inflation-induced loss in purchasing power. Consistent with this conjecture, we find high inflation lowers risk aversion, strengthens skewness preference, and increases demand for lottery-like investments. Due to increased gambling demand, lottery-type stocks become overpriced and earn lower future returns. This relation is stronger for inflation-sensitive lottery stocks that attract retail attention and are harder to arbitrage. These findings indicate that increased gambling demand during high inflation generates predictable patterns in stock returns.

Institutional Investors and Echo Chambers: Evidence from Social Media Connections and Political Ideologies, with Nicholas Guest and Brady Twedt

This study examines the role of exposure to different beliefs in the decision making of institutional investors. We exploit geographic variation in social media connections and political ideologies to measure the extent to which institutional investors interact with people of differing political persuasions. We find that firms whose investors reside in echo chambers, or in other words are likely connected with more likeminded individuals, are subject to greater earnings responses that subsequently reverse, indicative of investor overreactions. This result is concentrated among firms with less robust information environments. Firms with more such investors in “echo chambers” investors are also the subject of more extreme tweets and lower future stock returns. Overall, our results suggest that connections to people with diverse beliefs and information sets increase investor sophistication and improve financial decision making, leading to more efficient markets.

Investing When Fewer Expect to Parent: Fertility Expectations and Financial Risk-Taking, with Judith Bohnenkamp and Ville Rantala

We examine how fertility expectations influence financial risk-taking using nationally representative data from three countries. Our results indicate that childless adults who do not expect children are 21–36\% more likely to invest in stocks than those who expect children, controlling for personal characteristics. This effect persists also when medical infertility instruments expectations. We find no similar effects for other savings categories, nor differences in self-reported risk tolerance. Households expecting children report shorter financial planning horizons, which may explain their lower risk-taking. These results suggest declining fertility can increase young adults’ stock market participation through childbearing expectations.

The Price of Restricted Choice: Abortion Bans and Women's Wealth, with Priya Garg

This paper identifies a link between state-level abortion restrictions and the gender wealth gap. Exploiting staggered state-level implementation of gestation-based bans, we find women residing in restrictive states experience a reduction in wealth of up to 35% relative to women in non-restrictive states. Moreover, abortion restrictions widen the gender wealth gap, reducing women's wealth accumulation by 36-49% relative to men. These effects operate through negative shocks to savings and retirement balances, reduced investment in risky assets, and higher debt. Overall, policy-imposed constraints on reproductive autonomy generate substantial economic disparities, contributing to persistent wealth inequality beyond traditional motherhood penalties.

Local Information Segregation and Household Financial Decision-Making (Job Market Paper)

Using proprietary geocoded data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I examine whether local racial integration influences financial decision-making. I find that individuals residing in racially integrated communities are more likely to invest in public equity markets after accounting for individual and county-level differences. Exploiting within-individual variation from relocation as well as using Great Migration population shocks as an instrument, I demonstrate that integration has a causal effect on participation. Evidence suggests that racial integration improves local information quality, lowering informational barriers to participation. Moreover, this informational advantage enables integrated investors to achieve superior risk-adjusted performance on their local portfolios.