Mahyar Kargar

Mahyar Kargar

Assistant Professor of Finance

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign



I am an assistant professor of finance at the Gies College of Business at UIUC.

I received my PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management in 2019.

My research focuses on financial intermediation, asset pricing, financial market liquidity,
and public finance.

Download my CV.


Research

Publications and Forthcoming Articles

  1. Inventory, Market Making, and Liquidity in OTC Markets
    (with Assa Cohen, Benjamin Lester, and Pierre-Olivier Weill)
    Journal of Economic Theory (2024), forthcoming
    published version | presentation video by Pierre-Olivier Weill | slides

  2. The Incidence of Student Loan Subsidies: Evidence from the PLUS Program
    (with William Mann)
    Review of Financial Studies (2023), 36(4), 1621–1666
    code | published version | summary in Forbes

  3. Corporate Bond Liquidity during the COVID-19 Crisis
    (with Benjamin Lester, David Lindsay, Shuo Liu, Pierre-Olivier Weill, and Diego Zúñiga)
    Review of Financial Studies (2021), 34(11), 5352–5401
    Internet Appendix | code | slides | published version | NBER WP | presentation video (1h:10-1h:40) | summary

  4. Heterogeneous Intermediary Asset Pricing
    Journal of Financial Economics (2021), 141(2), 505–532
    Internet Appendix | data | slides | published version | Erratum (due to publisher error)
    Xavier Drèze Award for the most outstanding research paper at UCLA Anderson

Working Papers

  1. Sequential Search for Corporate Bonds
    (with Benjamin Lester, Sébastien Plante, and Pierre-Olivier Weill)
    Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Finance
    slides | NBER WP | NBER Digest
    Conferences: NBER Asset Pricing, NBER Big Data, AEA, Stern/Salomon Microstructure Conference, FIRS, 18th Central Bank Conference on the Microstructure of Financial Markets, AFA

  2. Liquidity and Risk in OTC Markets: A Theory of Asset Pricing and Portfolio Flows
    (with Juan Passadore and Dejanir Silva)
    Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Finance
    slides | presentation video
    Conferences: SaMMF, SFS Cavalcade, SITE, MFA

  3. The Marginal Value of Public Pension Wealth: Evidence From Border House Prices
    (with Darren Aiello, Asaf Bernstein, Ryan Lewis, and Michael Schwert)
    slides | NBER WP
    Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Financial Economics
    Conferences: SFS Cavalcade, Red Rock, AFA, FIRS, EFA

  4. Investor Demand, Firm Investment, and Capital Misallocation
    (with Xu Tian, Yufeng Wu, and Jaewon Choi)
    Revise & Resubmit, Journal of Financial Economics
    Conferences: ITAM Finance Conference, AFA, EFA, MFA, WFA

  5. Why is Stock-Level Demand Inelastic? A Portfolio Choice Approach
    (with Carter Davis and Jiacui Li)
    NBER LTAM presentation video by Carter Davis | slides
    Conferences: NBER LTAM, AFA, MFA, Maryland Young Scholars, UConn Finance Conference

Selected Work in Progress

Teaching

University of Illinois

Instructor

  • MSF Financial Derivatives (Spring 2022, 2024)
  • MSF/Undergrad Fixed Income Portfolios (Spring 2020, 2021, 2022, 2024, Fall 2022)

UCLA Anderson School of Management

Instructor

  • MFE R/MATLAB Programming Workshop (Fall 2017, 2018)

Teaching Assistant

  • MBA Behavioral Finance, Prof. Avanidhar Subrahmanyam (Spring 2019)
  • MFE Empirical Asset Pricing, Prof. Lars Lochstoer (Winter 2019)
  • MBA Foundations of Finance, Prof. Bruce Carlin (Fall 2018)
  • MFE Data Analytics and Machine Learning, Prof. Lars Lochstoer (Fall 2016)
  • MBA Corporate Finance, Prof. William Mann (Winter 2015, 2016, 2017)
  • Executive Program Corporate Strategy, Prof. David Wessels (May 2015)

Discussions

Conference Discussions

  1. “Speculation and Liquidity in Stock and Corporate Bond Markets,” by Paolo Pasquariello and Mirela Sandulescu, CICF 2023 (slides)
  2. “Intermediary Market Power and Capital Constraints,” by Jason Allen and Milena Wittwer, FIRS 2023 (slides)
  3. “Nonbank Fragility in Credit Markets: Evidence from a Two-Layer Asset Demand System,” by Olivier Darmouni, Kerry Y. Siani, and Kairong Xiao, Chicago Fed Workshop on Non-Bank Financial Institutions 2023 (slides)
  4. “The Distributional Effects of Student Loan Forgiveness,” by Sylvain Catherine and Constantine Yannelis, SFS Cavalcade 2022 (slides)
  5. “Mutual Fund Fragility, Dealer Liquidity Provisions, and the Pricing of Municipal Bonds,” by Yi Li, Maureen O’Hara, and Alex Zhou, Brookings Municipal Finance Conference 2021 (slides)
  6. “Grit and Credit Risk: Evidence from Student Loans,” by Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly Cornaggia, and Han Xia, AFA 2021 (slides)
  7. “Corporate Bond Purchases After COVID-19: Who Did the Fed Buy and How Did the Markets Respond?,” by Thomas Flanagan and Amiyatosh Purnanandam, Atlanta Fed Conference on Financial Stability and the Coronavirus Pandemic 2020 (slides)
  8. “Agency in Intangibles,” by Colin Ward, FIRS 2019 (slides)

Contact