I am a principal economist at the Federal Reserve Board. My main research interests are banking, financial stability, networks, labor and finance.

[New paper] "Do Tougher Immigration Enforcement Policies Inadvertently Hurt Women Inventors?"

Publications

1. "A Labor Capital Asset Pricing Model," with Lars-Alexander Kuehn and Mikhail Simutin (SSRN) (Internet Appendix) (Data) 2017, Journal of Finance, 72(5), 2131-2178

• Best Paper Award: ASU Sonoran Winter Finance Conference 2013, WRDS Award for an Outstanding Paper in Asset Pricing Research (MFA 2013)
• Presentations: AFA, CSEF-EIEF-SITE conference on Finance and Labor, ASU Sonoran Finance Conference, MFA, SFS Cavalcade, CAPR Workshop on Production Based Asset Pricing BI Norway, Midwest Macro, Carnegie Mellon University, Tsinghua University, UT Dallas
• What it's about: We show both empirically and theoretically that labor search frictions are an important determinant of the cross-section of equity returns.

2. "Taxing Atlas: Executive Compensation, Firm Size and Their Impact on Optimal Top Income Tax Rates," with Laurence Ales and Andres Bellofatto (SSRN) 2017, Review of Economic Dynamics, 26, 62-90

• Presentations: 19th Annual UNC Tax Symposium, SED, Tepper/LAEF Advances in Macro-Finance, North American Summer Meeting of the Econometric Society, 2nd Workshop of the Australasian Macroeconomic Society, Arizona State University, University of Arizona
• What it's about: We study the optimal taxation of top income earners who are modeled as firm managers and show how to quantify the model using readily available firm-level data.

3. "Bank Networks and Systemic Risk: Evidence from the National Banking Acts," with Haelim Anderson and Mark Paddrik (SSRN) (Online Appendix) 2019, American Economic Review, 109(9), 3125-3161

• Media: Wall Street Journal, Oxford Business Law Blog, W. P. Carey News and Research
• Code and data: Download code here
• Presentations: NBER Summer Institute DAE, AEA, SFS Cavalcade, EFA, FIRS, CICF, MFA, St. Louis Fed Conference on Innovations in Central Banking, Chicago Financial Institutions Conference, ASU, Fixed Income and Financial Institutions Conference, Riksbank Workshop on Challenges in Interconnected Financial Systems, Early Career Women in Finance conference, Federal Reserve Monetary and Financial History Conference, Banking and Financial Crises—Lessons from History Workshop by Chicago Fed, Bank of Canada Payment System Workshop, Financial Stability Conference by FRB Cleveland and the OFR, WashU in St. Louis
• What it's about: Using an interbank network model and unique historical data on interbank deposits before and after the National Banking Acts, we quantify how the concentration of interbank deposits at reserve and central reserve cities would have affected financial stability.

4. "A Theory of Collateral Requirements for Central Counterparties," with Agostino Capponi and Hongzhong Zhang, 2022, Management Science, 68(9), 6355-7064

• Media: Risk.net, Oxford Business Law Blog
• Presentations: AFA, 2nd Conference on Non-bank Financial Sector and Financial Stability (LSE), NYU Stern Microstructure Conference, Finance Down Under, Developments in Alternative Finance (Birmingham), Waterloo Conference in Statistics, Actuarial Science and Finance (WatSAF), Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, HEC Paris, SEC
• What it's about: We develop a novel framework for designing collateral requirements allocated as initial margin and default fund in a centrally cleared market.

5. "Access to Finance and Technological Innovation: Evidence from Pre-Civil War America," with Yifei Mao, 2023, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 58(5), 1973-2023

• Presentations: NBER Summer Institute Innovation, NBER Summer Institute Development of the American Economy, AFA, WFA, EFA, SFS Cavalcade, FIRS, Texas Finance Festival, University of Kentucky Finance Conference, GSU CEAR-Finance Conference: Financing Tangible and Intangible Capital, Young Scholars Finance Consortium Texas A&M, Chicago Financial Institutions Conference, CICF, WAPFIN@Stern, Auburn University, UCLA, Halle Institute for Economic Research, University of Calgary
• What it's about: Exploiting a unique historical setting in Pre-Civil War America, we provide new evidence on how access to finance impacts technological innovation and establish the role of labor practices in shaping the finance-innovation nexus.

6. "Workplace Automation and Corporate Financial Policy," with Thomas Bates and Fangfang Du, Forthcoming Management Science

• Media: W. P. Carey Magazine
• Presentations: NBER Economics of AI, Labor and Finance Group meeting, Early Career Women in Finance-Conference, MFA, NFA, CICF, Future of Growth Conference, 6th SDU finance workshop, Nova SBE Conference in Corporate Bankruptcy and Restructuring, Santiago Finance Workshop, 4th joint research conference on firm financing, organization and dynamics, Arizona State University, Boston College, ITAM, University of Alberta, University of Tennessee
• What it's about: Firms' ability to substitute automated capital for labor provides an option to reduce labor-induced operating leverage, allowing for less conservative financial policies.

Working Papers

7. [NEW!] "Do Tougher Immigration Enforcement Policies Inadvertently Hurt Women Inventors?" with Fangfang Du, Yinghua Li

• Presentations: Labor and Finance conference at Indiana University; Women in System Economic Research Conference at Atlanta Fed
• What it's about: Tougher immigration enforcement policies widen the gender gap in innovation by reducing the supply of undocumented immigrant labor in household services.

8. "It's Not Who You Know - It's Who Knows You: Employee Social Capital and Firm Performance," with DuckKi Cho, Lyungmae Choi, Michael Hertzel

Revision Resubmitted to Management Science

• Presentations: AFA, WAPFIN@Stern, Kelley Junior Finance Conference, UA-ASU Junior Finance Conference, 3rd Future of Financial Information Conference, FIRS, NFA, MFA, CICF, Boca Corporate Finance and Governance Conference, Society of Labor Economists annual meeting, KIF-KAEA-KAFA Conference, Hawaii Accounting Research Conference, Arizona State University, Nanyang Technological University
• What it's about: Using unique data from a professional networking app, we measure a firm's social capital derived from employees' connections with external stakeholders and identify a positive effect on firm performance.

9. "Distress Dispersion and Systemic Risk in Networks"

• Media: Oxford Business Law Blog
• Presentations: 15th FDIC/JFSR Bank Research Conference, Oxford Financial Intermediation Theory Conference, BIS Global Financial Interconnectedness, Olin Summer School on Financial Intermediation and Contracting, Financial Stability Conference by FRB Cleveland and the Office of Financial Research, USC Marshall Ph.D. Finance Conference, Richmond Fed, RPI, Case Western Reserve, ASU, Rutgers, Columbia, Georgia State, Minnesota, Cornell, Tulane, UCLA, Treasury OFR, Johns Hopkins U, St. Louis Fed, HEC Lausanne
• What it's about: I develop a model of contagion that stems from endogenous risk-sharing when financial firms differ in distress levels.