Topic: Finance in a Time of Disruptive Growth
Speaker: Nicolae Gârleanu, Paul H. Stephens Chair in Applied Investment Analysis, Professor of Finance, Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley
Date: November 28, 2019 (Thursday)
Time: 10:00am-11:30am
Location: 1-200, Building 1
Language: English
Abstract:
We build a model in which the arrival of new technologies displaces demand for old technologies. This disruption causes redistribution due to lack of risk sharing both within and across investor cohorts. We model the financial industry as a costly device to improve risk sharing, and determine its size in equilibrium. We further study wealth dynamics, equilibrium prices, and flows into various asset classes. We show that an increase in disruptive activity renders existing firms' publicly traded equities riskier and renders “alternative asset classes” as diverse as fixed income, real estate, and private equity more attractive. The result is a decline in the real interest rate, an expansion of the financial industry, and increased flows towards alternative asset classes. Interestingly, alternative asset classes offer higher expected rates of return than conventional equities despite the diversification benefits afforded by the former.
About the speaker:
Nicolae Gârleanu is the Paul H. Stevens Chair in Applied Investment Analysis at the Haas School of the University of California at Berkeley. Most of Professor Gârleanu’s research is in the area of asset pricing, where he concentrates on various facets of liquidity and the extent to which consumption and production dynamics are consistent with asset returns. His papers have been published in such journals as Econometrica, the American Economic Review, the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Financial Economics. Some of these papers received best-paper awards, including the Blackrock/Brennan Award for Best Paper in the RFS (2012), the Smith Breeden Prize for the Best Paper in the Journal of Finance in areas other than corporate finance (2012), the Brattle Prize for the Best Paper in the Journal of Finance in corporate finance (2018), the Utah Winter Finance Conference Best Paper Award (2011), and the AIM Investment Center Best Paper Award (2016).
