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Richard Townsend

Professor of Finance

Profile

Richard Townsend is a Professor of Finance at UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on entrepreneurial and behavioral finance. His work has appeared in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies.

Townsend is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Finance. He previously served as an Associate Editor of Management Science, the Review of Finance, and the Journal of Empirical Finance. His research has received the AQR Insight Award, the Journal of Financial Economics Jensen Prize, and the Society for Financial Studies Arthur Warga Award.

Townsend received a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University. Before joining Rady, he was an Assistant Professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business.


Publications

Publications

Political Sentiment and Innovation: Evidence from Patenters
(with Joseph Engelberg, Runjing Lu, and William Mullins), Review of Financial Studies, 2025, 38(9): 2718-2758

Fencing Off Silicon Valley: Cross-Border Venture Capital and Technology Spillovers
(with Ufuk Akcigit, Sina T. Ates, Josh Lerner, and Yulia Zhestkova), Journal of Monetary Economics, 2024, 141: 14-39

Flight to Safety: How Economic Downturns Affect Talent Flows to Startups
(with Shai Bernstein and Ting Xu), Review of Financial Studies, 2024, 37(3): 837-881

Does Career Risk Deter Potential Entrepreneurs?
(with Joshua Gottlieb and Ting Xu), Review of Financial Studies, 2022, 35(9): 3973-4015

Can the Market Multiply and Divide? Non-Proportional Thinking in Financial Markets
(with Kelly Shue), Journal of Finance, 2021, 76(5): 2307-2357

How do Consumers Fare when Dealing with Debt Collectors? Evidence from Out-of-Court Settlements
(with Ing-Haw Cheng and Felipe Severino), Review of Financial Studies, 2021, 34(4): 1617-1660
Lead Article, RFS Editor’s Choice

Do Household Wealth Shocks Affect Productivity? Evidence from Innovative Workers During the Great Recession
(with Shai Bernstein and Timothy McQuade), Journal of Finance, 2021, 76(1): 57-111

Are Early Stage Investors Biased Against Women?
(with Michael Ewens), Journal of Financial Economics, 2020, 135(3): 653-677

How Do Quasi-Random Option Grants Affect CEO Risk-Taking?
(with Kelly Shue), Journal of Finance, 2017, 72(6): 2551-2588

Growth through Rigidity: An Explanation of the Rise in CEO Pay
(with Kelly Shue), Journal of Financial Economics, 2017, 123(1): 1-21
Lead Article, JFE Jensen Prize for Best Papers in Corporate Finance and Organizations (2nd Prize)

The Impact of Venture Capital Monitoring
(with Shai Bernstein and Xavier Giroud), Journal of Finance, 2016, 71(4): 1591-1622

Propagation of Financial Shocks: The Case of Venture Capital
Management Science, 2015, 61(11): 2782-2802

Research Areas

Corporate Finance
Entrepreneurial Finance
Behavioral Finance