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I
am currently a visiting student in Finance at the Tepper School of Business
at Carnegie Mellon University.
I
am also on the academic job market and will be interviewing at the ASSA
Meetings in Atlanta in January 2010.
Research
Interests: Portfolio Choice, Real Estate, Household Finance, Asset Pricing,
Macroeconomics
Curriculum Vitae: PDF
Working Papers:
•
"Out of Balance: Housing and
the Consumption Allocation of Households" (2009) Job Market Paper
As a durable
good, housing provides both consumption and investment benefits. However,
the structure of the housing market is such that most households cannot
separate these benefits. In this paper, I analyze the impact of this
constraint on the consumption allocation of homeowners who would ideally
like to own just a fraction of their home. I show that for these
homeowners, the relative cost of living in their home is not just the
imputed rental cost. It also includes an opportunity cost of having an
unbalanced financial portfolio. This cost varies substantially over time,
and it is especially high in “good” times, when available investment
opportunities yield high returns and homeowners allocate a high fraction of
their wealth to current consumption. As a result, this cost dampens
variations in the level of their housing consumption, and it amplifies
variations in both their level of non-housing consumption and the
composition of their consumption baskets. I test the first of these three
hypotheses on consumption volatility using data from the PSID and find
empirical support that homeowners who face a high opportunity cost choose
ceteris paribus a low housing consumption volatility.
• "Hedging Labor Income Risk" (2009)
with Thomas Jansson, Christine Parlour, and Johan Walden
We investigate
the relationship between workers' labor income and capital market
investment. Using a detailed Swedish data set on employment and portfolio
holdings we estimate wage volatility, and labor productivity for Swedish
industries and, motivated by theory, demonstrate that highly labor
productive industries are more likely to pay workers variable wages. We
also find that both levels and changes in wage volatility are significant
in explaining changes in household investment portfolios. A household going
from an industry with low wage volatility to one with high volatility will
ceteris paribus decrease its portfolio share of risky assets by 25%, i.e.,
7,750 USD. Similarly, a household that switches from a low labor
productivity industry to one with high labor productivity decreases its
risky asset share by 20%. Our results suggest that human capital risk is an
important determinant of household portfolio holdings.
• "Why Should I Sell a
Fraction of My House? The Welfare Benefits of Equity Sharing Programs"
(2007) with Carles Vergara Alert
• Undergraduate Honors
Thesis:
"Selectivity
and the Economics of Independence for
Today's
Overseas Territories" in
Explorations: The U.C. Davis
Undergraduate Research Journal 2004,
Vol. 7.
Sample Teaching Material:
I wrote the following handouts for the
Introduction to Finance MBA course in Fall 2007:
Handout1 Handout2 Handout3
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