Welcome to my website!
I am a financial economist studying non-bank financial intermediation and asset management. My research interests include institutional investors, financial advice, fintech wealth management and angel investing.
In May 2023 I will join the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University.
Publications
[1] “The Globalization of Angel Investments: Evidence Across Countries”
with Josh Lerner, Antoinette Schoar and Karen Wilson
Journal of Financial Economics (2018)
Across 21 countries, angel funding generates a positive impact on firm growth, performance, survival, and follow-on fundraising.
[2] “Regulating Commission-Based Financial Advice: Evidence from a Natural Experiment”
Online Appendix
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (2022)
Limitations on commissions paid to financial advisers reduce prices of financial products and stimulate investment.
[3] “Paying for Beta: Leverage Demand and Asset Management Fees”
Online Appendix
with Steffen Hitzemann and Mingzhu Tai
Journal of Financial Economics (2022)
Mutual fund investors pay extra fees for leverage provided by funds. This explains how fees can be larger than fund risk-adjusted returns.
Working Papers
[4] “Strategic Borrowing from Passive Investors: Implications for Security Lending and Price Efficiency” (August, 2021)
with Darius Palia
Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Financial Economics
We hypothesize that short-sellers strategically borrow shares from passive investors to reduce dynamic short-selling risks. This behavior drives up lending demand for stocks with high passive ownership, conditional on ownership by other investors. Consistent with our hypothesis, these stocks have better price efficiency, higher lending fees and higher short interest. They also exhibit lower risks of unexpected fee increases and loan recall, have longer loan durations, and attract better-informed short-sellers. These results are concentrated in hard-to-borrow stocks where short-sale constraints are likely to bind. Our findings suggest that passive investing relaxes short-sale constraints by making borrowing shares less risky.
MEDIA: ETF.com
PRESENTATIONS: NYU Stern, UNC Kenan-Flagler, USC Marshall, IDC Summer Finance Conference 2019, Triple Crown Conference 2019, The CUHK International Finance Conference 2019, University of Oklahoma, Washington University in St. Louis, University of Miami, USCD
[5] “Robo Advice and Access to Wealth Management” (October, 2022)
with Michael Reher
We examine how access to automated wealth managers affects households’ investment in financial markets and welfare across the wealth distribution. Our setting features novel microdata from a major U.S. robo advisor and a quasi-experiment in which the advisor reduces its account minimum by 90%. Based on a difference-in-difference estimator, the reduction increases middle-class households’ participation by 110% but does not affect wealthier or poorer households. We rationalize this behavior with a quantitive model calibrated using portfolio-level data. The reduction raises welfare through diversification, priced risk exposure, and personalization. The overall welfare gains are moderate but heterogeneous. Older households with weak earnings growth gain most.
PRESENTATIONS: California Corporate Finance Conference 2019, CAFR FinTechWorkshop 2020, NY Fed Fintech Conference 2020, The Paris Conference on FinTech and Cryptofinance 2020, Toronto Fintech Conference 2020, Georgetown Fintech Seminar Series 2020, UT Dallas Fall Finance Conference 2021, FINRA/NORC Access and Impact Conference 2021, FMA 2021, 5th Shanghai-Edinburgh-London Fintech Conference 2021, Jackson Hole Finance Group Conference 2022, Northeastern University Finance Conference 2022, University of Mannheim, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2022 CEAR-RSI Household Finance Workshop
[6] “Production Complementarities in Asset Management” (February, 2022)
with Lu Han and Galit Ben Naim
Production complementarities arise in asset management because portfolio managers work in teams, and firms know more about managers’ investment skill than investors. Using unique data on compensation in the Israeli mutual fund industry, we find that managers assigned to more skilled teammates and receiving more advertising earn lower compensation today in return for higher expected productivity and future earnings. This tradeoff is stronger for more skilled and less visible managers. Thus, compensation depends not only on manager input but also on complementarities between firm resources and manager skills, suggesting an integral role firms play in ensuring incentive alignment for investors.
PRESENTATIONS: University of Wisconsin-Madison, UNC Kenan-Flagler , CICF 2022, FMA 2022
[7] “Which Investors Drive Anomaly Returns and How?” (October, 2022)
with Yizhang Li and Andrea Tamoni
We decompose the time-variation in returns on anomaly portfolios in the effects of different investor types and their trading motives. Trading due to changes in investor preferences for observed stock characteristics explains nearly 50% of the variation, while the effects of changes in stock characteristics themselves account only for 3%. Flow-induced trading explains 15% of the variation, and the remaining part is mostly driven by unobserved characteristics. Households are the most consequential investors, since changes in their preferences account for approximately 40% of the variation in returns on the average anomaly portfolio. These findings support theories of anomalies where information-based trading by less sophisticated investors plays an important role. Our results are inconsistent with theories which emphasize the importance of trading by institutions, including flow-induced trading.
PRESENTATIONS: 11th MSUFCU Conference, MFA 2023, Adam Smith Workshop Spring 2023
Stanislav Sokolinski 