Sylvain Champonnois

Assistant Professor of Finance

Sylvain Champonnois received his Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University. He was a Lamfalussy Fellow at the European Central Bank in 2005. His main research interests are corporate finance, international finance and industrial organization. While at Princeton, he has served as a teaching assistant on courses dealing with corporate finance and accounting, international macroeconomics and the regulation of international financial markets.

Papers

Comparing Financial Systems: A Structural Analysis (2008)
The empirical relation across countries between financial systems and the characteristics of the population of firms is consistent with welfare maximization.

Bank Competition and Economic Stability: the Role of Monetary Policy (2008)
Multiple equilibria emerge from the complementarity between bank and non- financial firm decisions. Adverse aggregate or idiosyncratic shocks may cause a breakdown in which the economy collapses into a no-production equilibrium. Less bank competition improves the profitability of banks and makes the economy less vulnerable to adverse shocks but it also distorts the efficient allocation of capital. This creates a stability/efficiency tradeoff for monetary policy.

What Determines the Distribution of Firm Sizes? (2008)
This paper analyzes the qualitative and quantitative determinants of firm size heterogeneity. We present a simple theory of the firm in which firm size dispersion increases with goods substitutability (an industry-specific factor), with external investors risk-tolerance and labor market flexibility (two country-specific factors). Empirically, in an industry-country panel, industry characteristics explain 3 times more of the differences in firm size distribution than country characteristics.

Work in Progress

The Impact of Financial Integration on Investement and Financing
After financial integration, the larger firms raise more external finance, the smaller firms raise less or no external finance but overall, aggregate investment and welfare increases.

Investment Behavior during a Financial Crisis: New Evidence from International Equity Funds, with Harald Hau, Joel Peress, Massimo Massa and Hélène Rey