Job Market Candidates

We are proud to showcase our current candidates in the job market and introduce the next generation of talent ready to make an impact.

• Academic Placement Director: Prof. Felix Kübler
• Discover successful placements of graduates from our department:Graduates page

Research Interest: Banking, Corporate Finance, and Climate Finance

Contact:
emanuela.benincasa@df.uzh.ch
Personal Website

Main Advisor: Steven Ongena

Job market paper: The Social Effects of Bank Deserts

This paper investigates whether bank branch presence affects firm misconduct. Exploiting ZIP code-level variations from staggered branch closures across the USA, I find that firms in bank deserts—neighborhoods without bank branches—are more likely to violate environmental and social laws than those in never-deserted neighborhoods. Misconduct is more pronounced in environmental offenses, suggesting firms target regulations with lower legal liabilities. Higher misconduct seems driven by reduced morally induced costs for misbehaving, as offenses increase in bank deserts without prior branch fraud or scams. Overall, findings indicate that the absence of bank branches deteriorates firms' practices in local communities.

Research Interest: Empirical Corporate Finance and Entrepreneurship

Contact:
ana.ferro@df.uzh.ch
Personal Website

Main Advisor: Alexander Wagner

Job market paper: Is the Fire Out? Initial Public Offerings in Fossil Fuel Industries and the Green Transition

This paper investigates the initial public offerings of fossil industry-related enterprises (FIREs) in the United States in the last two decades. Firms operating in fossil fuel-related industries —sectors facing increasing disfavor amid the transition to a more sustainable economy — likely face additional challenges in raising public capital. The paper shows a declining trend in both the number and volume of FIRE IPOs in recent years, though new firms continue to enter the public market. The analysis includes a comparison between FIREs and other firms going public, incorporating textual analysis of IPO prospectuses to assess how firms present their offerings. Additionally, it explores how newly listed FIREs differ from already-listed industry incumbents, particularly in their innovation activities and output.

Research Interest: Fixed-Income Markets with an emphasis on Sustainable Finance, Corporate Finance, and Central Banking

Contact:
benjamin.schneider@df.uzh.ch
Personal Website

Main Advisor: Kjell Nyborg

Job market paper: Green Bonds: Commitment to Sustainability under Asymmetric Information

This paper studies the potential of green bonds in addressing information asymmetries related to firms' exposure to climate risks by signalling a commitment to sustainable investing. Using event study and triple-difference methodology on extant debt and equity securities around green bond and comparable conventional bond announcements, it introduces a new identification strategy to assess the impact of green bonds on issuers' cost of capital. The results show that green bonds are associated with a lower cost of capital (debt and equity), especially for longer-maturity bonds, with the effect driven by non-financial issuers and those with lower credit ratings. Financial issuers show no significant impact, likely due to credibility concerns. Green bond issuers also become less sensitive to climate concerns post-announcement, supporting the signalling hypothesis. A green bond signalling model is introduced, illustrating how issuers give up their flexibility and signal a "green commitment," thereby mitigating climate risk information asymmetries, resulting in beneficial effects.

Research Interest: Financial Intermediation, Corporate Finance, and the Application of Machine Learning in Finance

Contact:
yanjie.wang@df.uzh.ch

Main Advisor: Michel Habib

Job market paper: Managerial Caution and Bank Returns during the Great Financial Crisis

This paper examines how cautious banks performed relative to their less cautious counterparts during and after the Great Financial Crisis. Addressing this question requires a precise definition of ‘caution’ and an identification strategy to isolate the effects of cautious behavior on bank performance. The findings indicate that cautious banks outperformed others by holding more cash as a fraction of cash and short-term investments and relying less on repurchase agreements as a fraction of total short-term borrowings.

Read the full interview: Job Market Candidate: Yanjie Wang