research

• The Rise of Green Banks in the U.S. (Job Market Paper)

Abstract: I examine how U.S. Green Banks (i.e.,public or mission-driven lenders that recycle capital for climate-related projects) shape the flow of green finance in the U.S. Using a newly hand-collected dataset of 39 state and local Green Banks from 2011-2024, I trace both funding sources and project-level deployment [ongoing]. A simple Stackelberg model, with a welfare maximising Green Bank that co-finances with profit-maximising lenders, highlights leverage caps and coordination frictions as key constraints.

• International Climate News (with R. Colacito, M.M. Croce, and B. Yang)

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Abstract: We develop novel high-frequency indices that measure climate attention across a wide range of developed and emerging economies. By analyzing the text of over 23 million Tweets published by leading national newspapers, we find that a country experiencing more severe climate news shocks tends to see both an inflow of capital and an appreciation of its currency. In addition, brown stocks experience large and persistent negative returns after a global climate news shock if located in highly exposed countries. A risk-sharing model in which investors price climate news shocks and trade consumption and investment goods in global markets rationalizes these findings.

📅 Upcoming presentations: NBER Summer Institute: International Finance & Macroeconomics (July 2025); EFA (August 2025)

• When the Markets Get CO.V.I.D.: COntagion, Viruses, and Information Diffusion (2024) (with M.M. Croce, P. Farroni and I. Wolfskeil) Journal of Financial Economics, Vol. 157: 103850.

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Abstract: We quantify the exposure of major financial markets to news shocks about global contagion risk while accounting for local epidemic conditions. For a wide cross section of countries, we construct a novel dataset comprising (i) announcements related to COVID19 and (ii) high-frequency data on epidemic news diffused through Twitter (Hassan et al. 2019's methodology). We provide novel empirical evidence about financial dynamics both around epidemic announcements and at daily/intra-daily frequencies. Analysis of contagion data and social media activity about COVID19 suggest that the market price of contagion risk is significant.