Yeonjoon Lee
Financial Economist
The Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond
530 E Trade St, Charlotte, NC 28202
My research lies in the areas of industrial organization and finance. My current research focuses on household finance, banking, and non-fungible tokens.
REFERENCES
Daniel Ackerberg (Co-Chair): daniel.ackerberg@gmail.com
Eugenio Miravete (Co-Chair): eugenio@eugeniomiravete.com
Richard Lowery: richard.lowery@mccombs.utexas.edu
WORKING PAPERS
“Financial Intermediaries and Agency Problems With and Without Vertical Incentives” 2nd Round Revise and Resubmit at Management Science
Winner of the Outstanding Doctoral Student Paper, Southern Finance Association 2020
I study agency problems between brokers and investors in the retail bond market. The presence of suitability or fiduciary regulations, which govern transactions in this setting, can lead to tensions for brokers between maximizing their own profit and acting in the best interests of their customers. This paper measures the degree to which these conflicting incentives influence brokers by examining the U.S. reverse convertible bond market. While brokers do consider the profits of investors when making decisions, I estimate that their own profits are roughly three times more important, suggesting the existence of severe agency problems that reduce consumer welfare. Moreover, despite "arms-length transaction" regulations requiring that vertical relationships do not influence broker activities, I show that brokers are sensitive to the markups of their vertically integrated upstream firms. Counterfactual analysis shows that vertical incentives also reduce consumer surplus, although to a smaller degree than the agency costs.
"Racial Disparities and Potential Channels in the NBA Digital Collectibles Market" Revise and Resubmit at Applied Economics
PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS
Scott Frame, Ruidi Huang, Erica Xuewei Jiang, Yeonjoon Lee, Will Shuo Liu, Erik Mayer, Adi Sunderam. “The Impact of Minority Representation at Mortgage Lenders” Journal of Finance, forthcoming
Yeonjoon Lee. 2022. "Measuring the Impact of Rarity on Price: Evidence from NBA Top Shot" Marketing Letters. (click link)
In Ho Lee and Yeon Joon Lee. 2008. "Learning and Herding: An Account of Hwang Woo-Suk Scandal" Journal of Economic Theory and Econometrics 19 (2), 77-94.
The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the position of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond or the Federal Reserve System.