Research


Working Papers

Keeping Up in the Digital Era: How Mobile Technology Is Reshaping the Banking Sector (JMP)

I hand-collect data on the roll-out of mobile banking apps in the U.S. over the previous decade and pair them with local positive shocks to the importance of mobile services. I find that digital competition among banks increases in response to these shocks. Specifically, small community banks without or with low-quality apps (SCBs) lose deposits and small business lending to nearby larger and better-digitalized banks (LBs). Additionally, I provide evidence of a paradigm shift in local lending practices. While SCBs decrease their branch-based small business lending activities, better-digitalized LBs increase small business lending only in areas where they do not operate branches. A significant gap in local economic growth arises as LBs do not seem able to fully compensate for the decrease in SCB lending under this paradigm shift. 

The Financial Restitution Gap in Consumer Finance: Insights from Complaints Filed with the CFPB

with Rawley Heimer (Arizona State University)

Who benefits most from government-facilitated dispute resolution in financial services? Using confidential internal data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), we find that high-income, highly educated, and white consumers (high-SES) are nearly twice as likely to secure financial restitution after filing complaints. A financial sophistication channel partially explains these disparities, as high-SES consumers are more likely to seek financial compensation and identify potential fraud. However, CFPB investigations reveal that companies also disproportionately mishandle complaints from low-SES consumers. Further, we employ a difference-in-differences framework to examine the impact of formal reports highlighting the complaint handling deficiencies sent to companies following the investigations. These nudges significantly increase financial restitution but primarily benefit high-SES filers. Our results underscore the unequal beneficiaries of government interventions, highlighting the complementary role of financial sophistication.

* presented by me.


Work-in-Progress

Who generates the predictability in the cross-section of intraday stock returns?

with Steven L. Heston (University of Maryland), Robert A. Korajczyk (Northwestern University), Ronnie Sadka (Boston College)

Heston et al. (2010) find a pronounced intra-day pattern in stock prices in which stocks with higher-than-average returns in half-hour time period of the trading day tend to have higher-than-average returns in the same half-hour time period of the trading day on subsequent days. The pattern in statistically significant for at least 40 trading days. We study the same phenomenon, out of sample, over the period 2010 to 2020. This allows us determine if the results are robust, as opposed to either subsequently arbitraged away or due to data snooping. We find that pattern persists. We expand the analysis to include the overnight period and investigate a set of possible causes of the pattern such as the influence of institutional and retail traders, short selling costs, periodicity of the news cycle.

Discussions

FMA 2021 - Tournament Incentives and Corporate Innovation, slides


FMA 2022 - Loan Covenant Violation and Corporate Pension Funding, slides


MFA 2023 - Does Fintech Lending Lower Financing Costs?, slides


FMA 2023 - What Drives Insider Lending?, slides


AFA 2024 - Fraud Litigation and FHA Mortgage Lending, slides


MFA 2024 - Mobile Apps, Firm Risk, and Growth, slides


EAGLE FINANCE CONFERENCE 2024 - Bank Branch Density and Bank Runs, slides


FIRS 2024 - The Digital Divide and Refinancing Inequality, slides


FMA 2024 - Is the Bank Monetary Policy Conduit Clogged?, slides


FMA 2024 - Risk Externalities of Financial Innovation, slides


Referee work


Journal of Banking and Finance 

Journal of Behavioural and Experimental Finance