Published and accepted papers
The Rise of Anti-Activist Poison Pills (with Ofer Eldar and Tanja Kirmse)
Journal of Financial Economics, Conditionally Accepted
ALEA Best Paper in Corporate Law and Governance Award (2023)
Selected Media Coverage: The Deal
Strategic Learning and Corporate Investment (with Paul Décaire)
Journal of Finance, Forthcoming
[Internet Appendix]
The Consequences to Directors for Deploying Poison Pills (with William Johnson and Jonathan Karpoff)
Management Science, 72(6), 4569-5489, June 2026
Featured on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
Selected Media Coverage: The Corporate Counsel
[Published version] [Internet Appendix]
Corporate Takeover Defenses (with Jonathan Karpoff)
in David J. Denis (ed.), Handbook of Corporate Finance
(Debt) Overhang: Evidence from Resource Extraction
Review of Financial Studies, 34(4), 1699-1746, April 2021
[Published version] [Internet Appendix]
Colorado Finance Summit Best PhD Paper Award (2018)
Crisis Poison Pills (with Ofer Eldar)
Review of Corporate Finance Studies, 10(1), 204-251, March 2021
RCFS Rising Scholar Award (2022)
Featured on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
Selected Media Coverage: RCFS Spotlight Institutional Investor Bloomberg's Money Stuff Race to the Bottom
[Published Version] [Internet Appendix]
Institutional and Legal Context in Natural Experiments: The Case of State Antitakeover Laws (with Jonathan Karpoff)
Journal of Finance, 73(2), 657-714, April 2018.
[Published Version] [Internet Appendix]
Hedging House Price Risk with Futures Contracts after the Bubble Burst (with Patrick Schorno and Steve Swidler)
Finance Research Letters, 11(4), 332-340, December 2014.
[Published Version]
Current working papers
Who Sets the Price? Information and the Delegation of Pricing Authority (with Alvin Chen and Leandro Sanz)
Presentations (* by co-author): Auburn University (Scheduled, 2026), Stockholm School of Economics* (Scheduled, 2026), Penn State University Happy Valley Finance Conference* (2026), Virtual Corporate Finance Seminar (2026), University of Notre Dame* (2026), Ohio State University (2026), Ohio University (2026)
Abstract: We show that price uniformity and rigidity in retail markets reflect how pricing authority is allocated between brand owners and retailers. Retailers observe local demand but do not internalize that their markdowns draw customers from others carrying the same brand; the brand, unable to verify local conditions, imposes a price floor applied broadly and revised rarely. A single instrument thus produces both uniformity across stores and rigidity over time, and both relax as the brand becomes better informed. We test the mechanism in three settings: one reassigns pricing authority, one removes the competition that motivates the floor, and one shocks the brand's information. Brand acquisitions reassign authority while holding the product and the retailer fixed: acquired products depart from their own pricing history, and converge toward the acquirer's routine only when it already prices in the same category. Private labels, which do not suffer from intrabrand competition, have prices that are 17 percent more dispersed than national brands and track local wages. After the January 2022 introduction of generative AI tools deployable at scale, products of more AI-exposed brand owners show 12 percent greater cross-store price dispersion, 19 percent more frequent repricing, lower average prices, and greater sensitivity to local wage conditions. Uniform pricing thus reflects the full vertical relationship, and not only the technology of retail execution.
Production and Externalities: How Corporate Governance Shapes Social Costs (with Alvin Chen)
Management Science, Revise & Resubmit
WRDS Best Paper Award at the Drexel Corporate Governance Conference (2024)
Featured on the Columbia Blue Sky Blog
Presentations (* by co-author): University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2026), RCF-ECGI Corporate Finance and Governance Conference (2025), University of Colorado Boulder (2025), University of Denver (2025), European Finance Association (2025), Stockholm School of Economics* (2024), Temple University (2024), Drexel Corporate Governance Conference (2024), Midwest Finance Association (2024), Swedish House of Finance*, Boston College (2023), University of Iowa (2023), University of Wisconsin Madison Junior Finance Conference (2023), Finance Theory Group Summer School (2023)
Abstract: We study how corporate governance affects social costs, focusing on the tension between mitigating managerial moral hazards and limiting negative externalities. We develop a parsimonious principal-agent model with negative production externalities, which predicts that when monitoring costs rise, firms substitute toward performance-based compensation, leading to socially costly production decisions. Using asset-level data from the U.S. coal industry, we find that ownership dispersion - the canonical proxy for rising monitoring costs - leads to an 11% increase in production and a 33% rise in safety violations. To establish causality, we exploit politically motivated coal divestment mandates that forced key monitoring institutions to exit, generating plausibly exogenous increases in monitoring costs. Consistent with our model, affected firms raised managerial bonus thresholds and experienced higher production and more safety violations. Our findings reveal how governance choices can inadvertently amplify social costs, with implications for sustainable investing and corporate governance design.
Resolving Estimation Uncertainty (with Paul Décaire and Denis Sosyura)
Presentations (* by co-author): ITAM (2025), Bretton Woods Finance & Accounting Ski Conference (2025) Chicago Federal Reserve Bank (2025), American Finance Association (2025), SFS Cavalcade North America at Georgia State University (2024), Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research* (ABFER) (2024), University of Maryland Finance Conference (2024), University of Massachusetts Lowell (2024), Ohio State University (2024), Arizona State University* (2024)
Abstract: Economic models develop conceptual frameworks for fundamental decisions but rarely prescribe a specific estimation approach. Using novel data on the inputs and assumptions in professional stock valuations, we study how financial analysts address estimation uncertainty when calculating a firm’s cost of capital. Analysts use the same return-generating model (CAPM) but diverge in their estimation choices for key inputs, such as equity betas. Such estimation choices are driven by idiosyncratic analyst-specific criteria, persist throughout their career and across brokerages, and generate large cross-analyst variation in discount rates for the same stock. The dispersion in discount rates is associated with higher market measures of investor disagreement, such as trading volume. Overall, we provide micro evidence on how financial experts resolve estimation uncertainty.
Works in progress
How Do Firms Choose Project Discount Rates? (with Hoa Briscoe-Tran and René Stulz)
Intragroup Agency and the Insulating Power of Classified Boards (with Dhruv Aggarwal, Jonathan Karpoff and Lubomir Litov)
Non-finance publications and permanent working papers
Analyzing the Perceived Benefits of LEED-Certified and Energy Star-Certified Buildings in the Realm of Local Economic Development (with Dustin Read and Suzanne Leland),
Economic Development Quarterly, 29(4), 363-375, May 2015.
Is Public Equity Deadly? Evidence from Workplace Safety and Productivity Tradeoffs in the Coal Industry (with Erik Gilje)
Featured on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
[NBER Working Paper] [Internet Appendix] [Presentation Video]
Published and accepted papers
The Rise of Anti-Activist Poison Pills (with Ofer Eldar and Tanja Kirmse)
Journal of Financial Economics, Conditionally Accepted
ALEA Best Paper in Corporate Law and Governance Award (2023)
Selected Media Coverage: The Deal
Strategic Learning and Corporate Investment (with Paul Décaire)
Journal of Finance, Forthcoming
[Internet Appendix]
The Consequences to Directors for Deploying Poison Pills (with William Johnson and Jonathan Karpoff)
Management Science, 72(6), 4569-5489, June 2026
Featured on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
Selected Media Coverage: The Corporate Counsel
[Published version] [Internet Appendix]
Corporate Takeover Defenses (with Jonathan Karpoff)
in David J. Denis (ed.), Handbook of Corporate Finance
(Debt) Overhang: Evidence from Resource Extraction
Review of Financial Studies, 34(4), 1699-1746, April 2021
[Published version] [Internet Appendix]
Colorado Finance Summit Best PhD Paper Award (2018)
Crisis Poison Pills (with Ofer Eldar)
Review of Corporate Finance Studies, 10(1), 204-251, March 2021
RCFS Rising Scholar Award (2022)
Featured on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
Selected Media Coverage: RCFS Spotlight Institutional Investor Bloomberg's Money Stuff Race to the Bottom
[Published Version] [Internet Appendix]
Institutional and Legal Context in Natural Experiments: The Case of State Antitakeover Laws (with Jonathan Karpoff)
Journal of Finance, 73(2), 657-714, April 2018.
[Published Version] [Internet Appendix]
Hedging House Price Risk with Futures Contracts after the Bubble Burst (with Patrick Schorno and Steve Swidler)
Finance Research Letters, 11(4), 332-340, December 2014.
[Published Version]
Current working papers
Who Sets the Price? Information and the Delegation of Pricing Authority (with Alvin Chen and Leandro Sanz)
Presentations (* by co-author): Auburn University (Scheduled, 2026), Stockholm School of Economics* (Scheduled, 2026), Penn State University Happy Valley Finance Conference* (2026), Virtual Corporate Finance Seminar (2026), University of Notre Dame* (2026), Ohio State University (2026), Ohio University (2026)
Abstract: We show that price uniformity and rigidity in retail markets reflect how pricing authority is allocated between brand owners and retailers. Retailers observe local demand but do not internalize that their markdowns draw customers from others carrying the same brand; the brand, unable to verify local conditions, imposes a price floor applied broadly and revised rarely. A single instrument thus produces both uniformity across stores and rigidity over time, and both relax as the brand becomes better informed. We test the mechanism in three settings: one reassigns pricing authority, one removes the competition that motivates the floor, and one shocks the brand's information. Brand acquisitions reassign authority while holding the product and the retailer fixed: acquired products depart from their own pricing history, and converge toward the acquirer's routine only when it already prices in the same category. Private labels, which do not suffer from intrabrand competition, have prices that are 17 percent more dispersed than national brands and track local wages. After the January 2022 introduction of generative AI tools deployable at scale, products of more AI-exposed brand owners show 12 percent greater cross-store price dispersion, 19 percent more frequent repricing, lower average prices, and greater sensitivity to local wage conditions. Uniform pricing thus reflects the full vertical relationship, and not only the technology of retail execution.
Production and Externalities: How Corporate Governance Shapes Social Costs (with Alvin Chen)
Management Science, Revise & Resubmit
WRDS Best Paper Award at the Drexel Corporate Governance Conference (2024)
Featured on the Columbia Blue Sky Blog
Presentations (* by co-author): University of North Carolina at Charlotte (2026), RCF-ECGI Corporate Finance and Governance Conference (2025), University of Colorado Boulder (2025), University of Denver (2025), European Finance Association (2025), Stockholm School of Economics* (2024), Temple University (2024), Drexel Corporate Governance Conference (2024), Midwest Finance Association (2024), Swedish House of Finance*, Boston College (2023), University of Iowa (2023), University of Wisconsin Madison Junior Finance Conference (2023), Finance Theory Group Summer School (2023)
Abstract: We study how corporate governance affects social costs, focusing on the tension between mitigating managerial moral hazards and limiting negative externalities. We develop a parsimonious principal-agent model with negative production externalities, which predicts that when monitoring costs rise, firms substitute toward performance-based compensation, leading to socially costly production decisions. Using asset-level data from the U.S. coal industry, we find that ownership dispersion - the canonical proxy for rising monitoring costs - leads to an 11% increase in production and a 33% rise in safety violations. To establish causality, we exploit politically motivated coal divestment mandates that forced key monitoring institutions to exit, generating plausibly exogenous increases in monitoring costs. Consistent with our model, affected firms raised managerial bonus thresholds and experienced higher production and more safety violations. Our findings reveal how governance choices can inadvertently amplify social costs, with implications for sustainable investing and corporate governance design.
Resolving Estimation Uncertainty (with Paul Décaire and Denis Sosyura)
Presentations (* by co-author): ITAM (2025), Bretton Woods Finance & Accounting Ski Conference (2025) Chicago Federal Reserve Bank (2025), American Finance Association (2025), SFS Cavalcade North America at Georgia State University (2024), Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research* (ABFER) (2024), University of Maryland Finance Conference (2024), University of Massachusetts Lowell (2024), Ohio State University (2024), Arizona State University* (2024)
Abstract: Economic models develop conceptual frameworks for fundamental decisions but rarely prescribe a specific estimation approach. Using novel data on the inputs and assumptions in professional stock valuations, we study how financial analysts address estimation uncertainty when calculating a firm’s cost of capital. Analysts use the same return-generating model (CAPM) but diverge in their estimation choices for key inputs, such as equity betas. Such estimation choices are driven by idiosyncratic analyst-specific criteria, persist throughout their career and across brokerages, and generate large cross-analyst variation in discount rates for the same stock. The dispersion in discount rates is associated with higher market measures of investor disagreement, such as trading volume. Overall, we provide micro evidence on how financial experts resolve estimation uncertainty.
Works in progress
How Do Firms Choose Project Discount Rates? (with Hoa Briscoe-Tran and René Stulz)
Intragroup Agency and the Insulating Power of Classified Boards (with Dhruv Aggarwal, Jonathan Karpoff and Lubomir Litov)
Non-finance publications and permanent working papers
Analyzing the Perceived Benefits of LEED-Certified and Energy Star-Certified Buildings in the Realm of Local Economic Development (with Dustin Read and Suzanne Leland),
Economic Development Quarterly, 29(4), 363-375, May 2015.
Is Public Equity Deadly? Evidence from Workplace Safety and Productivity Tradeoffs in the Coal Industry (with Erik Gilje)
Featured on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
[NBER Working Paper] [Internet Appendix] [Presentation Video]