PhD Candidate in Finance, London Business School | E-mail | 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 studies how ethical capital coordinates to reduce corporate externalities. I develop a general-equilibrium model of portfolio choice and shareholder influence that separates what investors value from how they reason under strategic interdependence. The paper introduces a Nash-Kant mixed equilibrium in which heterogeneous reasoning and coordination technology, rather than preferences alone, determine equilibrium ownership and externality levels. I test the model's predictions on a global panel of mutual funds and ETFs, and show that a fund's moral instrument, engagement versus exclusion, predicts its response to coordination shocks. IV estimates suggest that engagement-oriented ownership reduces subsequent firm-level emissions intensity. The paper extends standard coordination frameworks by incorporating non-best-response reasoning into a general-equilibrium model of asset pricing and coordination.
Coarse Classifications and Equilibrium Pricing
Abstract: This paper studies how institutional classifications affect equilibrium competition and pricing. Using global mutual fund data, I show that broad ESG classifications exhibit stronger negative fee relationships than the narrower holdings-based characteristics they summarize, including among passive funds. I develop an equilibrium model in which households evaluate funds through coarse representations that shape bounded comparison sets. Classification affects markups by altering replacement curvature within the active comparison environment: when nearby represented products are also low-curvature economic substitutes, equilibrium markups fall. The framework distinguishes representational substitutability from economic substitutability, separates pricing from regime viability, and shows that coarse classification systems can remain valuable even when they are imperfect screening devices. More broadly, the paper argues that equilibrium pricing depends not only on underlying product attributes, but also on the institutional representations through which those attributes become market-legible.
Do Investors Fairly Value Private Startup Securities? Evidence from 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: We study whether investors fairly value private startup securities, using mutual funds’ reported values of specific holdings. Venture-backed startups issue securities with different contractual rights, so latest-round issue prices may exceed fair values of earlier-round securities. Using hand-collected financing terms and a contingent-claims model, we show these differences create large valuation wedges. Mutual funds nevertheless mark earlier-round holdings above modeled fair values, often near latest-round issue prices. In secondary transactions, funds also purchase earlier-round securities at prices above modeled fair values. Misvaluation narrows after down rounds and with larger economic stakes, with implications for NAV accuracy and investor wealth transfers.
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 June 2026