Sarah Blau Reese

Academic Research                                                                            May 2024 - Present

1.   “Bubbles and Bitcoin Volatility,” 2024, with B. Blau, T. Griffith, and R. Whitby. Working paper – Submitted, R&R at the Journal of International Money and Finance (JIMF).

2.   “The Silicon Valley Bank Failure and the Performance on Politically Connected Banks,” with B. Blau, T. Griffith, and A. Baig. Working paper – preparing for submission.

3.  “Short selling and the Failure of Silicon Valley Bank,” with B. Blau, T. Griffith, and B. Reese. Working paper – preparing for submission.

4.  “The Effect of Aggregate Short Selling Activity on Macroeconomic Indicators,” with B. Blau and B. Reese. In progress – data collection complete.

Graduate Research Assistant                                                                                                     Logan, UT

Department of Applied Economics, Utah State University                                                      August 2025 - Present

·        Conducted empirical analysis for a grant-funded project on organic wheat production and adoption using survey data.

·        Cleaned, managed, and analyzed datasets using R, SAS, Stata, and Excel.

·        Assisted with literature reviews, econometric modeling, and development of research tables.

·        Supported preparation of reports and research outputs for grant deliverables.

Center for Growth and Opportunity                                                                          Logan, UT

Undergraduate Research Fellow                                                     August 2024 - May 2025

·        Coded and analyzed economic data using Stata, ensuring accurate statistical outputs for various research projects.

·        Developed and formatted research findings into professional, well-organized tables, enhancing the clarity and presentation of data in reports.

·        Assisted senior researchers by cleaning and merging data, contributing to the reliability of research results.

·        Collaborated in team discussions to interpret data results, shaping the direction of ongoing research initiatives.

Utah State University, Intermediate Corporate Finance                                Logan, UT

Undergraduate Teaching Fellow, Professor Angela Luo, CFA (mentor)       August 2024 - Present

·        Delivered a class session on Free Cash Flows to 20 students, covering corporate finance principles and facilitating discussions.

·        Graded assignments and provided constructive feedback to support student learning.

·        Tutored students on complex financial topics, enhancing understanding and performance

Utah State University, Intermediate Macroeconomics                                   Logan, UT

Undergraduate Teaching Fellow, Dr. Ayse Sapci (mentor)                    Jan 2022 - May 2024

·        Assisted the professor in evaluating and grading written assignments and quantitative problem sets for a class of 20+ students, ensuring fair assessments and actionable feedback.

·        Conducted weekly study sessions to explain macroeconomic theories and models, helping students gain a deeper understanding of course materials and improve exam results.

·        Offered personalized academic support through one-on-one tutoring, fostering individual progress and enhancing overall student performance.

Utah State University, Developmental Economics                                                Logan, UT

Undergraduate Teaching Fellow, Dr. Craig Palsson (mentor)    August 2022 - December 2022

·        Assisted the professor in grading assignments and exams for over 30 students, ensuring consistency and providing constructive feedback.

·        Led weekly review sessions, clarifying key concepts in developmental economics and improving student assessment performance.

·        Provided one-on-one tutoring to students struggling with course material, contributing to greater individual academic success.

This study investigates the relationship between public interest in financial bubbles and Bitcoin volatility. Our findings indicate that higher search volumes on Google for phrases related to financial bubbles, in both cryptocurrency markets and broader financial markets, correlate with increased volatility in Bitcoin. These results are consistent within a vector autoregressive (VAR) model that treats search volume as exogenous. Impulse Response Functions from these VARs demonstrate that exogenous shocks to Google search volumes lead to a significant rise in Bitcoin volatility, persisting for up to four months. This study contributes to the existing literature by identifying factors influencing Bitcoin volatility and underscoring the impact of public attention on its price dynamics.

This study examines the stock-price performance of depository institutions around the 2023 failure of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB). Prior research finds that politically-connected firms generally have higher valuations than non-connected firms – in part because connected firms have a higher potential for government support during times of crises. While federal and state regulators provided bailout funds to SVB depositors, institutional bailout funds were withheld. Therefore, this particular bank failure offers a unique opportunity to estimate the effect political connections have on the stock prices of other banks. Consistent with expectations, results show that cumulative abnormal returns (CARs) are significantly negative for all banks surrounding the SVB collapse. However, we find robust evidence that politically connected banks significantly underperform non-connected banks in the days following the SVB collapse. These results generally hold in various robustness tests and suggest that absent institutional bailout funds, the usual value premium associated with political connections markedly declines.

During the aftermath of the Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapse, various reports from the popular press began to circulate, suggesting that short sellers were targeting various banks that might have systemic connections or similar business lines to SVB. This type of trading behavior is consistent with some of the theoretical literature on the topic of predatory trading. This study seeks to carefully examine whether short sellers put additional price pressure on other banks after the failure of SVB. Results from our difference-in-difference tests indicate that, relative to matched non-banks, shorting activity in banks was not unusually high immediately following the SVB failure. If anything, short selling was lower than usual. Our results are robust to different univariate and multivariate tests and suggest that the short-selling activity that occurred in the financial sector following the SVB failure was not predatory in nature.

No abstract created yet.