PhD Candidate in Finance,
London Business School | E-mail
Job market candidate, 2025–26 |
CV |
SSRN
My theoretical work models how agents invest, coordinate and govern under institutional and informational frictions. In empirical work, I study causal relationships between preferences, institutions and real outcomes.
I am supervised by Anna Pavlova, Professor of Finance at London Business School.
Ethical Capital, Coordination, and the Correction of Externalities
Abstract: This paper builds a general equilibrium model of ethical investing and coordinated externality mitigation. Ethical behavior often departs from Nash rationality by relying on normative principles rather than belief-based best responses. I introduce the Kant equilibrium as a complement to Nash, and show that reasoning heterogeneity and coordination technology, rather than preferences alone, select unique coordination equilibria, explain minority catalysis in activism and predict when one-share-one-vote regimes aid or impede externality correction. I test model predictions on a global panel of mutual funds and ETFs, using textual analysis of filings to identify ethical mandates. Using the staggered rollout of the Climate Action 100+ initiative as a positive coordination shock, I find that engagement-oriented funds increase ownership in targeted high-externality firms relative to other firms and non-engagement funds. Dynamic estimates from a stacked event study confirm that reallocations are persistent. Using 2SLS, I show that ethical capital causally improves firm-level externality outcomes through coordinated engagement channels.
The ESG Fee Paradox: Investor Taste, Noisy Exposure, and the Economics of Mutual Fund Pricing
Abstract: The relationship between mutual fund fees and ESG exposure varies in sign across studies. Using global funds data, I show that negative fee–ESG gradients arise only in cross-sectional variation and are near zero in time-series specifications that exploit within-fund changes. Gradients emerge when ESG is measured through composite ratings and are near zero when exposure is constructed directly from holdings. These patterns are stable across major regulatory changes and similar across active and passive funds. To explain these patterns, I develop an equilibrium model in which investors value ESG as a nonpecuniary attribute they cannot observe directly. Intermediaries set fees and ESG exposure in a competitive environment, and investor aversion to attribute misclassification interacts with fees to shape perceived exposure risk. The equilibrium fee–ESG gradient is determined by a single threshold in signal precision, producing positive, zero, or negative slopes. This mechanism rationalizes the full range of empirical signs documented in the data.
Do Investors Overvalue Startups? Evidence from the Junior Stakes of
Mutual Funds
with Vikas Agarwal, Brad Barber, Si Cheng, Allaudeen Hameed, and Ayako
Yasuda.
Winner, Best Paper Award, 15th Annual Private Equity Research Symposium, University of North Carolina
Abstract: Mutual funds overvalue their junior stakes in startups by 53% compared to fair value models accounting for multi-tier capital structures. Junior securities are marked close to senior securities, despite the latter being worth 58% more. Funds overpay in secondaries, and valuations are not justified by exit outcomes. Overvaluation persists over time and across VC cycles, but declines after down rounds. The findings suggest underestimation of downside risk and overweighting of IPO scenarios.
Non-Economic Preferences and Financial Market Equilibrium
Abstract: I address how non-economic characteristics of investments are priced in equilibrium, through a model that ties together households that have preferences for both economic and non-economic characteristics of investments, fee-maximizing funds that compete with one another for household capital, and a real economy that exogenously supplies investment opportunities some of which exhibit the non-economic factor desired by households. Empirical evidence supports the model's key predictions, that fee rates decrease in the fund's holdings of assets with the desired non-economic factor and increase in investor preferences for that factor. I also provide structural estimates for the strength of investor preferences for ESG-friendly assets in the US and Europe.
Capital under Dissonance: Ideology, Instability, and Asset Prices
Abstract: This paper investigates how regime uncertainty, ideological shifts, and belief-driven expectations affect investment behavior and asset prices. Transitions between political regimes distort market signals and alter risk premia. The model endogenizes asset returns, participation, and long-run wealth accumulation under dynamic regime-switching beliefs.
The Intermediation of Social Preferences: Theory and Evidence
Abstract: This paper extends models of taste-based asset pricing to a setting with strategic, profit-maximizing intermediaries, unifying pricing, rent extraction, and real supply responses in general equilibrium. Empirically, it provides the first decomposition of non-pecuniary preference shocks into asset-price, rent, and allocation components, offering a tractable measure of taste pass-through in delegated portfolio markets.
Outside research, I write about London theatre at TheatreBee, tutor students in the sciences, economics and mathematics, and delight in curious dataset compilations such as Data is Plural.
Last updated: November 2025