Working Papers
Burnout to Buildout: Coal Exit and the Geography of Transition Costs
Job Market Paper
- Does exiting polluting assets necessarily deliver a green transition? I trace firm-level generation portfolios after a coal exit shock
- Fossil substitution vs. green transition: mandates and incentives expand renewable investment, but can carry geographic costs
- Counterfactuals from a firm decision model: aligning policy with resource geography delivers more output with fewer projects
Presentations: Durham (2026), CICF (2026), Exeter Sustainable Finance Conference (2026)
Paper (Jun 2026) Slides (Feb 2026)
Banking on Forest
- Credit markets distinguish between physical forest shocks and regulation-driven transition risk
- Fire-induced loss is priced throughout; human-induced loss only after EUDR, especially for EU operators
- Loan access supports green transition through responsible sourcing, reforestation, and plant divestiture
Presentations: Durham (2025), CICF (2025), GRASFI PhD Workshop (2025 Edinburgh), FMA (2025), FMA Europe (2025), Conference on Contemporary Issues in Banking (2025 St Andrews), Cardiff-Leeds Sustainable Finance Conference (2026 Leeds), etc.
Paper (Jan 2026) Slides (Dec 2025)
Trading Under Scrutiny: Social Media Attention and Congressional Trading
- Comprehensive dataset of congressional trades constructed through structured scraping, OCR, LLMs, and manual collection
- Individual-targeted Twitter discussions reduce trading volume and returns, especially for influential politicians and before elections
- Findings suggest social media acts as a disciplining force that complements the STOCK Act of 2012
Presentations: CICF (2026)
Biodiversity Risk and Bank Lending
- Assessing firm-level biodiversity risk (ecosystem dependency & business condition) using call transcripts
- Both loan spreads and non-price terms are unaffected by firms’ biodiversity risk or banks’ commitments
- Findings suggest limited impact of banks’ voluntary pledges across 44 risk proxies and multiple specifications
Presentations: Boca-ECGI Corporate Finance (2024), etc.
Paper (Aug 2024) Slides (Dec 2024)
Publications
Political Network and Muted Insider Trading
Journal of Corporate Finance, 2026
- Chairman–politician network built from biographical data, capturing the strength, rank, and duration of ties
- Political networks as informal governance in China: connected firms engage in less insider trading
- Stronger effects in non-SOEs and around M&A and major policy events, when private information is especially valuable
Presentations: Midwest FA (2023), FMA Europe (2023), FMA (2024), etc.
DOI: 10.1016/j.jcorpfin.2026.103007