Research

Board Connections and Competition in Airline Markets (Job Market Paper)

I investigate the effects of board connections on coordination among U.S. legacy airlines. I focus on connections caused by airline directors' appointments to the board of third, non-competing firms. These connections do not arise from changes to airlines’ boards, and are arguably unrelated to airlines’ current and future economic prospects. In my baseline specification, I find a reduction of 2.5% in offered seats when all legacy airlines in a market are board-connected. Consistent with an anti-competitive effect, board connections are associated with an average increase of 3.7% in ticket fares. I provide evidence on director networks enabling tacit coordination among competing firms, even when direct interlocks are not allowed.

Credit Conditions when Lenders are Commonly Owned (with Laura Grigolon and Emanuele Tarantino)

We investigate how common ownership between lenders affects the terms of syndicated loans. We provide a novel view on the role of common ownership in mitigating information asymmetries on the quality of borrowers and the resulting contractual distortions in the terms of the loan. Our empirical evidence shows that high common ownership decreases loan rates, lowers the share of the loan retained by the lead bank, and mitigates rationing at issuance. Further investigations lend support to the hypothesis that common ownership serves as a device for information transmission: common ownership especially affects the terms of loans for new borrowers, when the lead arranger is likely to hold an informational advantage. As information flows from the lead arranger to syndicate members, we show that member-to-lead common ownership does not affect the terms of syndicated loans.

Work in Progress

Who gains when pushing the rope? Evidence from the CSPP Program (with Marc Gabarro)

Innovation Adoption: Quality Shock Effect on Mobile Internet Demand (with Helena Perrone and Eleftheria Triviza)