Research
Working Paper
Campaign Rallies, Perceived Uncertainty, and Household Borrowing [SSRN]
Presentations: AFA PhD Poster Session (2025 scheduled), EFiC Conference in Banking and Corporate Finance (2024), Augustin Cournot Doctoral Days (2024), ERIM PhD Seminar (2023)
Awards: Best Paper Award of ACDD2024 Conference
Abstract: This paper examines how political compaigns during the 2016 U.S. presidential election influences perceptions of economic uncertainty and subsequent household financial behaviors. Using a difference-in-differences approach, I show that Clinton’s rallies reduced perceived economic uncertainty, particularly macro uncertainty. Moreover, areas hosting rallies showed an increase in P2P and mortgage loan applications after Clinton’s visits, aligning with life-cycle models with precautionary motives. Effects are stronger in areas having higher initial level of economic uncertainty. In contrast, Trump’s rallies did not significantly influence uncertainty perceptions or borrowing decisions. These findings shed light on a novel channel through which campaign information shapes real financial decisions, with effects contingent on the candidate involved.
Boards of Banks, with Daniel Ferreira, Tom Kirchmaier, and Daniel Metzger [SSRN]
Revise and resubmit at the Journal of Corporate Finance
Abstract: We show that country characteristics explain most of the cross-sectional variation in bank board independence. In contrast, country characteristics have little explanatory power for the proportion of outside bank directors with experience in the banking industry. Exploiting the time-series dimension of the sample, we show that changes in bank characteristics are not robustly associated with changes in board independence. In contrast, changes in board banking experience are positively related to changes in bank size and negatively related to changes in performance. The evidence suggests that country-specific laws and regulations affect the composition of boards of banks mainly through requirements for director independence.
Works in Progress
The Private Value of Open-Source Innovation, with Logan Emery and Chan Lim
- Preliminary draft available upon request.
Presentations: RSM Research Lunch Seminar (2023)
Abstract: We investigate open-source innovation by public firms and the private value it generates for these firms. Unlike patents, which grant inventors exclusive rights to their inventions, open-source innovations can be used by anyone. Nevertheless, using an extensive dataset of public-firm activity on GitHub, we find that open-source activity is widespread. Firms with open-source projects represent 68% of the U.S. stock market across 86% of industries. We estimate the value of all projects in our sample to be nearly 25 billion, with the average project generating $832,000. Firms facing less competition generate more value, suggesting they capture a larger portion of the total value of their innovation. Open-source value significantly predicts firm growth, but it also stimulates patenting by other firms and does not result in creative destruction. These results contribute to our understanding of how innovation generates private value in the absence of excludability.
How Do Employees Generate Firm Value With Generative AI? Evidence From Open-Source Software
- Preliminary draft available upon request.
Presentations: ERIM PhD Seminar (2024)