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, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. I received my PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management in 2019.

My research interests are in financial intermediation, asset pricing, financial market liquidity, and public finance.

Download my CV.


Research

Publications and Forthcoming Articles

  1. 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

  2. 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

  3. 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)
    Conferences: NBER Asset Pricing Spring 2023, NBER Big Data Spring 2023, AEA 2023

  2. Liquidity and Risk in OTC Markets: A Theory of Asset Pricing and Portfolio Flows (with Juan Passadore and Dejanir Silva)
    slides | presentation video
    Conferences: SaMMF, SFS Cavalcade 2021, SITE 2021, MFA 2022

  3. The Perceived Value of Pension Funding: Evidence from Border House Prices (with Darren Aiello, Asaf Bernstein, Ryan Lewis, and Michael Schwert)
    slides | NBER WP
    Conferences: SFS Cavalcade 2021, Red Rock 2021, AFA 2022, FIRS 2022, EFA 2022

  4. Inventory, Market Making, and Liquidity: Theory and Application to the Corporate Bond Market (with Assa Cohen, Benjamin Lester, and Pierre-Olivier Weill)
    presentation video by Pierre-Olivier Weill | slides
    Conferences: SFS Cavalcade 2022, SaMMF, SED 2021, AEA 2023

  5. Investor Demand, Firm Investment, and Capital Misallocation (with Jaewon Choi, Xu Tian, and Yufeng Wu)
    Conferences: ITAM Finance Conference 2023, AFA 2023, EFA 2023, MFA 2023, WFA 2022


Work in Progress

Teaching

University of Illinois

Instructor

  • MSF Financial Derivatives (Spring 2022)
  • MSF/Undergrad Fixed Income Portfolios (Spring 2020, 2021, 2022, 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. Intermediary Market Power and Capital Constraints,” by Jason Allen and Milena Wittwer, FIRS 2023 (slides)
  2. 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)
  3. The Distributional Effects of Student Loan Forgiveness,” by Sylvain Catherine and Constantine Yannelis, SFS Cavalcade 2022 (slides)
  4. 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)
  5. 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)
  6. Grit and Credit Risk: Evidence from Student Loans,” by Jess Cornaggia, Kimberly Cornaggia, and Han Xia, AFA 2021 (slides)
  7. Agency in Intangibles,” by Colin Ward, FIRS 2019 (slides)

Contact