Speaker Information

Martin J. Gruenberg has been the Acting Chairman of the FDIC Board of Directors since February 5, 2022. Since mid-2018, he has served as a member of the FDIC Board. Prior to that time, Mr. Gruenberg also served as Chairman of the FDIC, receiving Senate confirmation on November 15, 2012, for a five-year term. Mr. Gruenberg served as Vice Chairman and Member of the FDIC Board of Directors from August 2005, until his confirmation as Chairman. He served as Acting Chairman from July 2011 to November 2012, and also from November 2005 to June 2006.

 

Harun Alp is an Economist at the Federal Reserve Board. His research interest lies in macroeconomics, with a particular interest in firm dynamics, economic growth, and innovation.

Christoph Basten is Assistant Professor at the Department of Banking and Finance at University of Zurich. He currently works on amongst others bank cross-selling, negative interest rates, FinTech, and natural catastrophe insurance. Prior publication topics include the effects of macroprudential regulation on mortgage lending and the effects of taxes on real estate and mortgage markets. Prior to his Assistant Professorship he was the Economist of the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority FINMA for close to 5 years, as well as employed by the ETH business cycle institute KOF. He has been educated at Oxford, Pompeu Fabra, Harvard, and the European University Institute (EUI), where he obtained his PhD in 2011.

 

Matteo Benetton is an assistant professor in the Finance Group at Berkeley Haas. His work centers on the intersection between competition in the lending market, mortgage product design, financial innovation and regulation. Matteo's research has been awarded the CEPR Household Finance Best Student Paper Award in 2017, the EARIE Paul Geroski Prize for the most significant policy contribution in 2017, and the Arthur Warga Award for Best Paper in Fixed Income at SFS Cavalcade in 2021.

Joshua Bosshardt is an economist at the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). His research interests include financial intermediaries and housing finance. He received his PhD in economics from MIT in June 2021.

Maria Cecilia Bustamante is an Associate Professor in Finance at the University of Maryland. Her research interests focus on the interaction between corporate finance and industrial organization, as well as the asset pricing implications of corporate decisions. Before joining the University of Maryland as an Assistant Professor, she worked as an Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics. Maria Cecilia received her PhD in Finance from the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, and was a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley during her PhD.

Indraneel Chakraborty is an Associate Professor of Finance at the University of Miami. He received his B.Tech. from IIT Guwahati in 2001, his M.S. from MIT in 2003, and his Ph.D. from the Wharton School in 2010. Indraneel is interested in Financial Intermediation and Corporate Finance.

Adrien d'Avernas is an assistant professor of Finance at the Stockholm School of Economics. His research focuses on financial markets and the macroeconomy with emphasis on financial intermediation, monetary policy, and digital money.

Will Gornall is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. His research centers on innovation, financial structure, and banking. He received his BS and MS from the University of Waterloo and his PhD from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Juan Pablo Gorostiaga is a Finance Ph.D. student at IESE Business School (Barcelona, Spain). His research interests relate financial intermediation and corporate finance. Currently, he studies how lender’s pre-existing exposure determines lending behaviour, and which are the corporate policy implications for its borrowers.

Other topics of his interest are related to monetary policy and bank lending, and the development of capital markets in emerging economies.

Before joining the Ph.D., Juan Gorostiaga worked as an equity research and risk management analyst at S&P Global.

Zhiguo He is a Chinese financial economist serving as the Fuji Bank and Heller Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, where he has taught since 2008. He serves as the Director of Becker Friedman Institute China and Co-Director of the Fama-Miller Center. He is also a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, member of the academy committee at the Luohan Academy, and special-term Alibaba Foundation Professor of Finance at Tsinghua University. He earned his Ph.D. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Amanda Heitz is an assistant professor of finance at Tulane University's A.B. Freeman School of Business and an FDIC Visiting Scholar. Her research interests are primarily in banking, financial regulation, and corporate social responsibility. Inspired by her year visiting the FDIC, her recent work has centered around failed banks and the unintended consequences of company-run stress tests. Her research has been published in multiple journals, and she has received several best paper awards. Heitz received her Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management and a M.S. in Statistics, M.S. in Applied Math, and B.S. in finance all from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign.

Jean Helwege holds the Anderson Chair in Finance at UC Riverside, where she has worked since 2015. Her prior experience includes positions at the University of South Carolina, Penn State, the University of Arizona, and Ohio State. From 1988 to 1998 she worked in the Federal Reserve System, including six years at the Board as an economist and four years in New York as a senior economist. Professor Helwege's research interests include corporate bonds, bank regulation, financial distress and capital structure. She is the author of more than 35 scholarly articles in peer-reviewed journals, including publications in the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, and Journal of Financial Economics. She has served as co-editor of the Quarterly Journal of Finance as well as associate editor of the Journal of Financial Services Research. Professor Helwege has been an active member of the Midwest Finance Association, having served as Program Chair for the 2013 meeting, President in 2014, Treasurer in 2018, as well as fixed income track chair for several of the conferences. Her teaching includes courses on fixed income, banking, and corporate finance. She is the advisor to the Hylander Financial Group club and the Hylander Student Investment Fund (HSIF). Professor Helwege holds a Ph.D. in economics from U.C.L.A. and she received a B.A. in linguistics from the University of Chicago in 1980.

Peter Hoffmann is Lead Economist in the Financial Research Division at the European Central Bank. He conducts theoretical and empirical research in the areas of market liquidity and financial intermediation. His work has been published in top academic journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Finance from Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona.

Ragnar Enger Juelsrud is a Senior Research Economist and Special Advisor in the Research Unit of the Norwegian Central Bank (Norges Bank). His research focuses on macro-financial issues such as the effects of macroprudential regulation on the real economy and banking. He graduated with a PhD in Economics from BI Norwegian Business School in 2018.

Dr. Stephen A. Karolyi is a Senior Economic Advisor within Supervision Risk and Analysis of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). Before joining the OCC in 2020, Dr. Karolyi earned his Ph.D. in Financial Economics from Yale University and taught undergraduate and graduate courses in finance, accounting, and microeconometric methods at Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Karolyi's current research interests are in financial intermediation and corporate finance.

Minjae Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in Accounting at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He earned a BE in Electrical Engineering and BA in Business Administration from Korea University and an MS in Business and Technology Management from KAIST. His current research interests are in financial institutions, real effects of disclosure, and managerial myopia.

Dr. Sotirios Kokas is an Associate Professor in Finance at the Essex Business School of the University of Essex. His research interests span the area of Financial Intermediation with a specific interest in empirical banking. He analyses issues related to monetary policy; political economy of central banks; bank competition and financial regulation; financial network and spillovers; and syndicated loan market. He was a visiting scholar at Banco de Portugal, Bank of Finland (Suomen Paki), BIS, Imperial Business School and Michigan State University.

Scott Langford is a post-doctoral research fellow in the School of Public Affairs at Arizona State University. He completed his Ph.D. in Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was also a researcher at CREATE, an economic development research center affiliated with the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise at Kenan-Flagler Business School. The central thread of his research and teaching interests are the use of rigorous econometric techniques to investigate how local finance and public health conditions affect entrepreneurship and economic development.

Xiang Li is a finance PhD student at Boston College. Xiang's current research interests are in banking and entrepreneurship. His most recent research analyzes how bank competition narrows gender and racial gaps in entrepreneurship by reducing discrimination.

Giulia Lotti is Senior Economist at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and Research Associate at CAGE Warwick. She currently works in the Strategy Department of the IDB, where her research focuses on relevant policy questions for Latin America and the Caribbean and the role of Multilateral Development Banks. Previously, she worked for the Department of Andean Countries for the IDB and as a consultant for the World Bank. Her main research interests are finance and development, and labor economics. Giulia holds a PhD degree in Economics from the University of Warwick and a Master of Science in Economics from University College London (UCL).

Fabrizio Almeida Marodin is a financial economist at the Supervision, Regulation and Credit Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond. His policy work is focused on the Fed's Annual Stress Testing Program. His areas of research are banking, economic history and macroeconomics. Prior to joining the Richmond Fed, he worked in bank supervision for the Central Bank of Brazil and in private consulting. Fabrizio earned his PhD degree in Economics from the University of California at Irvine in 2021.

April Meehl is a fifth-year student in the joint Economics & Finance PhD program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research interests include financial intermediation, macroeconomics, and corporate finance. April's current research focuses on resolution policies for systemically important banks and the effects of these policies on banking industry dynamics.

Professor Nicoletti's research examines financial reporting and disclosure decisions made by financial institutions as well as the economic consequences of accounting standards and regulation. She holds a PhD in accounting from The Ohio State University and a BA in accounting and economics from Illinois Wesleyan University. Prior to returning to academia, Professor Nicoletti was a senior audit associate in financial services at KPMG in Chicago, IL.

Guangqian (Isaac) Pan received his Ph.D. in Finance from The Australian National University and joined The University of Sydney Business School in 2019. He earned a Bachelor of Actuarial Studies and a Master of Finance from The Australian National University. His research interests include Banking, Financial Stability, and Information Economics. His work has been presented at various international finance and economics conferences.

Mitchell Petersen is the Glen Vasel Professor of Finance and director of the Heizer Center for Private Equity and Venture Capital at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Professor Petersen's research is in the area of empirical corporate finance: the question how firms choose which projects they should invest in and how they should fund those projects. His research has included exploring: how small firms are funded and the importance of lending relationships, how information technology has altered the way in which banks lend, how the changes in the supply of capital alter a firm's access to capital, how firm's manage risk, how the cost of funding changes over the seasons and why, as well as the role of international taxation in the firm's investment decision. He was awarded the Smith-Breeden Prize for Outstanding Paper in the Journal of Finance in 1995 (for his paper "The Benefits of Lending Relationships: Evidence from Small Business Data") and the Michael Brennan Award for Best Paper in the Review of Financial Studies in 1998 (for his paper "Trade Credit: Theories and Evidence") and 2013 (for his paper “Investment and Capital Constraints: Repatriations Under the American Jobs Creation Act”). He was runner-up for the Brennan Award in 2008 (for his paper “Does the Source of Capital Affect Capital Structure”) and 2010 (for his paper “Estimating Standard Errors in Finance Panel Data Sets: Comparing Approaches”). The later paper also received the Review of Financial Studies - Editor's Choice Award in 2010.

Professor Petersen was voted the Kellogg Professor of the Year in 2000, the Executive MBA Outstanding Professor in 2008, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2020, and 2021, and the Kellogg Alumni Professor of the Year in 2010. He was awarded the Sidney J. Levy Teaching Award in 1996, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2006, 2008, 2010, and 2012.

He is a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and has been an Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance and the Review of Financial Studies. He is currently a member of the American Finance Association board, and formerly served on the Board of Directors of LR Nelson and Moody's Academic Advisory Research Committee. He currently serves as strategic advisor to OCA Ventures. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Radoslav Raykov is a Principal Researcher at the Financial Stability Department at the Bank of Canada. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Harvard University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Boston College. Prior to joining the Bank of Canada, he worked at the Boston Fed and taught at Harvard University.

His research interests focus on systemic risk, banking regulation and reform, OTC derivatives markets, and financial stability. His academic work has been published in leading journals such as the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and the Journal of Corporate Finance. Radoslav also advises the Bank of Canada on the oversight of financial market infrastructures (FMIs), and has contributed to the Canadian legislation on FMIs and their resolution regime.

Prior to Yale SOM, Gary B. Gorton was the Robert Morris Professor of Banking and Finance at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he taught since the fall of 1983. He was also professor of economics in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania, and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a former member of the Moody’s Investors Services Academic Advisory Panel. He is also the former director of the research program on banks and the economy for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. He has taught at the Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago, and previously worked as an economist and senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. During 1994 he was the Houblon-Norman Fellow at the Bank of England.

Dr. Gorton has done research in many areas of finance, including both theoretical and empirical work. Specific research has focused on the role of stock markets and banks, arbitrage pricing, commodity futures, bank capital, bank production of liquidity, loan sales, securitization, bank loan pricing, and bank regulation. Dr. Gorton also works on corporate control issues and asset pricing theory, including models of asset price bubbles and game theoretic models of trading and asset pricing. His research has been published in the American Economic Review, the Review of Economic Studies, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Economic Theory, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Business, and the Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking, among other places.

Dr. Gorton received his doctorate in economics from the University of Rochester. In the field of economics, he received master's degrees in economics at the University of Rochester and Cleveland State University, and also received a master's degree in Chinese Studies from the University of Michigan.

João Santos is the Director of the Financial Intermediation Division of the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He is also Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics. His research interests include financial systems design, banking, banking regulation and corporate finance. His articles have been published in various academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial Economics. He is a Co-Editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and an Associate Editor of various journals including the Journal of Money Credit and Banking and the Journal of Financial Services Research.

Dr. Santos joined the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in May 2000. From 1997 to 2000 he was at the Bank for International Settlements, and from 1994 to 1997 he was the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland. From 1992 to 1994, he was a lecturer in the Department of Economics at Boston University. Dr. Santos received his master’s and doctoral degrees in economics from Boston University in 1995.

Tim Schmidt-Eisenlohr is a Principal Economist in the International Finance division of the Federal Reserve Board and a Research Fellow of CESifo, Munich. He was previously an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Research Fellow at the Centre for Business Taxation at the University of Oxford and a member of Nuffield College. His research focuses on international finance, international trade, and banking. He received a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence in May 2010.

Oktay Urcan is associate professor of accountancy and Fred & Virginia Roedgers Faculty Fellow in Accountancy. He joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2014 after being an assistant professor for seven years at London Business School and, before that, a teaching assistant for five years at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research interests include archival financial accounting: debt market relevance of accounting information, accounting disclosures, and macro accounting. He has made the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent at the University of Illinois several times, and received the Raymond A. Hoffman Faculty Excellence Award in Accountancy in 2016. Urcan received his BA in management from Bogazici University in 2002 and his PhD in accounting from the University of Texas at Dallas in 2007.

Professor Vashishtha is an Associate Professor in the Accounting area. He received his PhD in Accounting from the University of Pennsylvania in 2012 and has been on the Fuqua faculty since graduation. Professor Vashishtha’s research focuses on the determinants of disclosure and its economic consequences. His recent work examines how mandated disclosure of public information affects corporate investment choices. He teaches financial accounting in the Daytime MBA program.

Stefan Walz is a 4th year PhD student in Finance and Economics at Columbia Business School. His primary research interests are financial intermediation and macro-finance, with a particular interest in understanding how frictions in the banking sector matter for asset prices and the broader economy. Prior to the PhD program, Stefan worked as a research assistant at the Federal Reserve Board in the Division of International Finance.

Gregory Weitzner is an Assistant Professor of Finance at McGill University where my research focuses on empirical and theoretical issues in financial intermediation. My most recent research analyzes how asymmetric information affects local bank lending markets. I received a PhD in Finance from UT Austin and a bachelor's and master's degree in economics from Boston University. Prior to my PhD I worked for two years in investment banking in New York City.

 

Ethan Yao is a Ph.D. candidate in Accounting at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota. He earned a BS in Urban Planning and a BS in Economics from Peking University and an MS in Economics and Finance from Center for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI). His current research interests are in financial reporting, government entities, regulatory disclosure, and banking.

Jinyuan Zhang is an assistant professor of finance at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Her research interests lie in the area of financial intermediation, including banking, pension funds, and mutual funds. Recently, she is working on understanding how technology reshape bank competition, and the implications.

Haonan Zhou is a Ph.D. candidate in Economics at Princeton University. He studies topics in international macroeconomics and international finance. His current research projects include cross-border capital allocation of non-bank financial institutions, aggregate implication of household heterogeneity in the open economy, and exchange rate dynamics. Prior to graduate studies, he worked at the Research Department of the IMF. He graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.S. in Mathematics, with Specialization in Economics.