Upcoming Talks:

Eastern Finance Association Conference & Early Career Forum, March 25-28, 2025, Asheville, NC, USA

Past Talks:

Contemporary Issues in Financial Markets and Banking, January 6, 2026, Virtual, Nottingham, UK

American Finance Association Junior Faculty Mentorship Program, January 2, 2026, Philadelphia, PA, USA

RCF-ECGI Corporate Finance and Governance Conference, December 14, 2025, Hoboken, NJ, USA

The Friends of Women in Finance Symposium in Greater New York, December 12, 2025, Hempstead, NY, USA

International Moscow Finance Conference, November 28, 2025, Virtual, Moscow, Russia

Financial Management Association Conference, October 22-25, 2025, Vancouver, Canada

Research Symposium on Finance and Economics, June 11-13, 2025, Virtual, India

Eastern Finance Association Conference, April 2-5, 2025, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Southwestern Finance Association Conference, February 12-14, 2025, San Antonio, TX, USA

WORKING PAPERS

1. Do “MEASURES” of Bank Diversification Measure Up? (with Priyank Gandhi and Darius Palia)

• We analyze the effectiveness of several widely-used measures of bank product market diversification in capturing the diversification effect (i.e., the implication that diversification reduces idiosyncratic volatility of a portfolio of financial products). Contrary to the implications of modern portfolio theory, existing measures of bank product market diversification are poorly or positively correlated with idiosyncratic volatility. We instead propose the Correlation-Adjusted Entropy (CAE) measure that accounts for the number of product categories, category income shares, and the imperfect correlations among category incomes. CAE accurately captures the diversification effect and variation in CAE coincides with exogenous shocks to bank product market diversification (the passage of Dodd-Frank and Economic Growth Acts of 2013 and 2018, respectively), providing an important external validation for our measure. We use CAE to revisit the question of how bank product market diversification impacts performance and find that diversified banks are more profitable and have lower probability of bankruptcy, and lower tail and systemic risk, which is in stark contrast to findings in the literature that document mixed results.

• Presented/Scheduled: 2026 Eastern Finance Association Conference, 2026 American Finance Association Junior Faculty Mentorship Program, 2026 Contemporary Issues in Financial Markets and Banking, 2025 RCF-ECGI Corporate Finance and Governance Conference, 2025 The Friends of Women in Finance Symposium in Greater New York, 2025 International Moscow Finance Conference, 2025 Financial Management Association Conference, 2025 Annual Financial Markets and Liquidity Conference, 2025 Eastern Finance Association Conference, 2024 Sydney Banking and Financial Stability Conference, 2024 Pacific Basin Finance, Economics, Accounting and Management Conference, 2023 American Finance Association Committee on Racial Diversity, Sacred Heart University, Rutgers University, Auckland University of Technology, University of Sydney, University of Melbourne, University of New South Wales, Victoria University

• Awards/Grants: 

Graduate Student Travel Award, Rutgers University

2. Bank Diversification and Tail Risk (with Priyank Gandhi and Darius Palia)

• We examine the relationship between bank business line diversification and tail risk by assessing diversification across 16 business lines using a unique entropy-based measure. The results reveal that a one standard deviation increase in diversification is associated with a 2.5% reduction in tail risk in the subsequent quarter. This effect lasts up to four quarters ahead and is present in both good and bad times. Furthermore, diversified banks exhibit higher future stock returns in the next three quarters, higher profitability, lower default risk, higher change in loan supply, and lending resilience during the Great Recession. Lastly, diversification of core business lines (related diversification) is associated with lower tail risk and higher returns while diversification of noncore business lines (unrelated diversification) is not. This paper emphasizes the crucial role of diversification across business lines in mitigating tail risk and enhancing overall bank performance particularly during periods of financial instability and documents that it is related diversification that benefits banks.

• Presented/Scheduled: 2025 Research Symposium on Finance and Economics, 2025 Southwestern Finance Association Conference, 2025 Contemporary Issues in Financial Markets and Banking, 2024 Northeast Business and Economics Association Conference, Inter-Finance PhD Seminar, Hofstra University, Xavier University, The College of New Jersey, Rutgers University, Sacred Heart University, University of the District of Columbia

• Awards/Grants: 

Shortlisted for Best Papers, 2025 Contemporary Issues in Financial Markets and Banking 

Graduate Student Travel Award, Rutgers University

PhD Student Travel Grant, 2025 Southwestern Finance Association Conference

PhD Student Scholarship Award, 2024 Northeast Business and Economics Association Conference

WORK IN PROGRESS

3. Executive Political Alignment and Bank Risk-Taking (with Juntai Lu)

• This paper examines whether executive political alignment affects bank risk-taking. We construct a novel measure of executive political alignment using political contribution data for senior executives of U.S. bank holding companies from 1992 to 2021. Exploiting within-bank changes in alignment, we study the relation between executive political alignment and multiple measures of bank risk, including tail risk, market-implied risk, downside risk, and non-performing loans. We find that shifts toward political alignment are followed by economically meaningful increases in bank risk-taking, consistent with political alignment relaxing perceived regulatory constraints or increasing expectations of government support.

4. Crypto Volatility Across Exchanges (with Alan Chernoff and Le "Tim" Dong)

• Cryptocurrencies exhibit high and persistent volatility, yet little is known about whether volatility is homogeneous across trading venues. Using high-frequency transaction data, we examine cross-exchange differences in realized volatility and the incidence of extreme price jumps. We document economically and statistically significant variation in volatility dynamics across exchanges, including differences in tail risk and jump frequency. The results suggest that exchange-specific microstructure characteristics, such as liquidity provision, market depth, and trading frictions, play an important role in shaping observed cryptocurrency volatility, with implications for market efficiency and digital asset risk.

5. Measuring the Cost of Capital for Banks (with Priyank Gandhi and Darius Palia)

• The existing banking literature lacks consensus on the optimal metric for assessing banks’ cost of capital, despite its frequent use of the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM), which fails to explain significant variations in expected returns. Our study addresses this gap by systematically comparing various metrics and proposing a more effective one, enabling us to revisit the low-risk anomaly in bank stock returns where banks with lower leverage exhibit higher returns. Furthermore, we reassess the impact of the Dodd-Frank Act’s Volcker Rule on banks’ cost of capital.

6. Catering vs. Commitment: Corporate Green Disclosures During ESG Trends (with Amra Hrustanovic)

7. Voting Rules, Corporate Control, and Firm Value: Evidence from Universal Proxy Voting (with Juntai Lu)