Thursday, April 9

6:30 pm
Dinner – Jacoby’s Restaurant & Mercantile
335 E. Caesar Chavez, Austin, TX 78702

Friday, April 10

Morning

Session Chair:
Rowling Hall, 5th Floor Special Events Room

8:00-9:00 am
Registration and breakfast – 5th floor Special Events Room, Rowling Hall

9:00-10:00 am
“A Model of U.S. Monetary Policy and the Global Financial Cycle”
Authors: Rohan Kekre (Chicago Booth) and Moritz Lenel (Princeton)
Discussant: David Chapman (University of Virginia)

10:00-10:15 am
Break

10:15-11:15 am
“The Liquidity Promises of QE”
Authors: Felix Corell (VU Amsterdam), Fédéric Holm-Hadulla (European Central Bank), Matteo Leombroni (Boston College), Lira Mota (MIT), and Melina Papoutsi (European Central Bank)
Discussant: Alan Moreira (NYU)

11:15-11:30 am
Break

11:30 am – 12:30 pm
“Macroeconomic Announcements and the Repricing of Earnings Risk”
Authors: Leyla Han (Boston University) and Ella Patelli (UBC)
Discussant: Kent Daniel (Columbia)

12:30-2:00 pm
Lunch – 5th floor Rowling Hall

Afternoon

Session Chair:
Rowling Hall, 5th Floor Special Events Room

2:00-3:00 pm
“The Financial Consequences of Wanting to Own a Home”
Authors: Caitlin Gorback (University of Texas at Austin) and Gregor Schubert (UCLA)
Discussant: Peter Koudijs (NYU)

3:00-3:15 pm
Break

3:15-4:15 pm
“Financial Frictions and Geographical Diversification of National Homebuilders”
Authors: Seohee Kim (Indiana University)
Discussant: Max Maksimovic (University of Maryland)

4:15-4:30 pm
Break

4:30-5:30 pm
“Creditor Rights and Credit Cycles”
Authors: Martin Kornejew (Bocconi University), Shohini Kundu (UCLA), and Karsten Müller (National University of Singapore)
Discussant: Heitor Almeida (University of Illinois)

5:45 pm
Depart for Dinner Cruise (bus available for out-of-town attendees)

6:15 pm
Boat departs from the LCRA landing behind the LCRA’s Jack Miller Building (3701 Lake Austin Blvd.)
Parking is available in the LCRA headquarters visitor parking lot or garage (across the street at 3700 Lake Austin Blvd.)

Saturday, April 11

Morning

Session Chair:
Rowling Hall, 5th Floor Special Events Room

8:00-9:00 am
Breakfast – 5th floor Rowling Hall

9:00-10:00 am
“Venture Capital as Portfolios of Compound Options”
Authors: Sebastian Hillenbrand (Harvard Business School) and Erik Stafford (Harvard Business School)
Discussant: TBD

10:00-10:15 am
Break

10:15-11:15 am
“Power Banks: Do Tax Equity Investors Add Value to Renewable Power Projects?”
Authors: Daniel Garrett (Wharton) and Sophie Shive (University of Notre Dame)
Discussant: James Weston (Rice)

11:15-11:30 am
Break

11:30 am – 12:30 pm
“Banking on Inattention”
Authors: Xu Lu (University of Washington) and Lingxuan Wu (NYU)
Discussant: Wei Xiong (Princeton)

12:30-1:30 pm
Lunch – 5th floor Rowling Hall

A room block has been reserved for Thursday, April 9^th through Sunday, April 12^th, 2026 at the AC Hotel Austin.

Reserve your room now

You are welcome to make alternate arrangements at a nearby hotel. Contact Kyle Hernandez if you would like other suggestions.

Program Committee:

Aydogan Alti
Johnathan Cohn
Sheridan Titman

Organizing Committee:

Kyle Hernandez

The first meeting of the Texas Finance Festival (TFF) was in Kerrville, Texas, in 1999. The Kerrville Folk Music Festival is held annually in Kerrville, thus the name for our conference. Since then, the conference has been held in Austin, Horseshoe Bay, Marble Falls, and San Antonio.

2025 Program

“The Subjective Belief Factor”
Authors: Sean Myers (Wharton), Ricardo De La O (USC), and Tingyue Cui (Wharton)
Discussant: Andrea Vedolin (Boston University)

“Certain vs. Uncertain Timing”
Authors: Indira Puri (NYU)
Discussant: Ian Dew-Becker (Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago)

“The Debt Ceiling’s Disruptive Impact: Evidence from Many Markets”
Authors: Will Cassidy (Washington University in St. Louis) and Shreye Mirani (Washington University in St. Louis)
Discussant: Kumar Ventkataraman (Southern Methodist University)

“Incentives to Lose: Disclosure of Cover Bids in OTC Markets”
Authors: Andrey Ordin (University of Texas at Austin) and Ruslan Sverchkov (Warwick)
Discussant: Zhaogang Song (Johns Hopkins University)

“Speculation, Forward Exchange Demand and CIP Deviations in Emerging Economics”
Authors: Pierre De Leo (Maryland), Lorena Keller (Wharton), and Dongchen Zou (Wharton)
Discussant: Adrien Verdelhan (MIT)

“The Real Effects of Bankruptcy Forum Shopping”
Authors: Sam Antill (HBS) and Aymeric Bellon (UNC)
Discussant: Ben Iverson (BYU)

“Optimal Credit Scores Under Adverse Selection”
Authors: Nicole Immorlica (Microsoft Research), Andre Sztutman (Carnegie Melon), and Robert Townsend (MIT)
Discussant: Uday Rajan (University of Michigan)

“The Real Effects of GSE Redistribution: Evidence from Difference-in-Discontinuity Estimates”
Authors: You Suk Kim (Federal Reserve Board), Feng Liu (CFPB), and David Zhang (Rice)
Discussant: Dragana Cvijanovic (Cornell)

2024 Program

“Financing the Global Shift to Electric Mobility”

Authors: Jan Bena (The University of British Columbia), Bo Bian (The University of British

“Green Labeling”

Authors: Tuomas Tomunen (Boston College) and Livia Yi (Boston College)

“A New Test for an Old Puzzle”

Authors: Lorenzo Bretscher (University of Lausanne), Peter Feldhutter (Copenhagen Business School), Andrew Kane (Duke), and Lukas Schmid (University of Southern California)

“Corporate Bond Issuance by Financial Institutions and Economic Cycle”

Authors: Tetiana Davydiuk (Johns Hopkins), Tatyana Marchuk (Norwegian Business School), and Ivan Shaliastovich (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

“Misallocation and Asset Prices”

Authors: Winston Wei Dou (University of Pennsylvania), Yan Ji (HKUST), Di Tian (HKUST) and Pengfei Wang (PKU)

“How Do Health Insurance Costs Affect Firm Labor Composition and Technology Investment?”

Authors: Janet Gao (Georgetown University), Shan Ge (New York University), Lawrence D. W. Schmidt (MIT) and Christina Tello-Trillo (University of Maryland)

“Bailing out (Firms’) Uninsured Deposits: A Quantitative Analysis”

Authors: Aaron Pancost (The University of Texas at Austin), and Roberto Robatto (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

“Specialized Lending when Big Data Hardens Soft Information”

Authors: Zhiguo He (University of Chicago), Jing Huang (Texas A&M), and Cecilia Parlatore (New York University)

“Excess Commitment in R&D”

Authors: Marius Guenzel (University of Pennsylvania), and Tong Liu (MIT)

2022 Program

“What Drives Investors’ Portfolio Choices? Separating Risk Preferences from Frictions”
By: Taha Choukhmane (MIT), Tim de Silva (MIT)

“Intermediation via Credit Chains”
By: Zhiguo He (University of Chicago), Jian Li (Columbia University)

“Siphoned apart: A Portfolio Perspective of Payment for Order Flow”
By: Markus Baldauf (University of Chicago), Joshua Mollner (Northwestern University), Bart Zhou Yoeshen (INSEAD)

“Illiquidity and Inequality”
By: Daniel Neuhann (UT-Austin), Michael Sockin (UT-Austin)

“The Dema“The Demand for Long-term Mortgage Contracts and the Role of Collateral”
By: Lu Liu (Wharton)

“Optimal Time-Consistent Debt Policies”
By: Andrey Malenko (University of Michigan), Anton Tsoy (University of Toronto)

“Bad News Bankers: Underwriter Reputation and Contagion in Pre-1914 Sovereign Debt Markets”
By: Sasha Indarte (Wharton)

“Product Differentiation and Oligopoly: A Network Approach”
By: Bruno Pellegrino (University of Maryland)

“Shocks and Technology Adoption: Evidence from Electronic Payment Systems”
By: Nicolas Crouzet (Northwestern University), Apoorv Gupta (Dartmouth College), Filippo Mezzanotti (Northwestern University)

2021 Program

“How Integrated Are Corporate Bond and Stock Markets?”
By: Mirela Sandulescu (Michigan)

“Information Chasing versus Adverse Selection”
By: Gabor Pinter (Bank of England), Chaojun Wang (Wharton), and Junyuan Zou (INSEAD)

“Monetary Policy Transmission in Segmented Markets”
By Yiming Ma (Columbia), Anthony Lee Zhang (Chicago), and Jens Eisenschmidt (European Central Bank)

“LTCM Redux? Hedge Fund Treasury Trading and Funding Fragility during the COVID-19 Crisis”
By: Mathias Kruttli (Federal Reserve Board), Phillip Monin (Federal Reserve Board), Lubomir Petrasek (Federal Reserve Board), and Sumudu Watugala (Cornell)

“Does Political Partisanship Cross Borders? Evidence from International Capital Flows”
By: Elisabeth Kempf (Chicago), Mancy Luo (Erasmus), Larissa Schaefer (Frankfurt), and Margarita Tsoutsoura (Cornell)

“Bond Market Stimulus: Firm-Level Evidence from 2020-21”
By: Olivier Darmouni (Columbia) and Kerry Siani (Columbia)

“Regulatory Costs of Being Public: Evidence from Bunching Estimation”
By: Michael Ewens (Cal Tech), Kairong Xiao (Columbia), and Ting Xu (Virginia Darden)

“Externalities as Arbitrage”
By: Ben Hebert (Stanford)

“How Costly is Noise? Data and Disparities in Consumer Credit”
By: Laura Blattner (Stanford) and Scott Nelson (Chicago)

“FinTech Lending and Cashless Payments”
By: Pulak Ghosh (Indian Institute of Management), Boris Vallee (Harvard), and Yao Zeng (Wharton)

“Did Fintech Lenders Facilitate PPP Fraud?”
By: John Griffin (UT-Austin), Sam Kruger (UT-Austin), and Prateek Mahajan (UT-Austin)