Matthew Baron

Biography

Matthew Baron's primary research focus is on banking crises. These periods of extreme stress in banking systems, which often involve widespread bank failures and depositor runs, are a recurring phenomenon throughout economic history. The overarching goal of his work is to uncover the fundamental sources of financial fragility, understand the mechanisms through which distress in the financial sector affects the macroeconomy, and guide policy development to prevent future banking crises.

Baron is working on several new research projects related to: 1) the role of investor beliefs in driving banking crises, 2) the interplay between bank insolvency and illiquidity in driving crisis dynamics, 3) the dynamics of bank equity capitalization around crises, 4) the role of implicit creditor guarantees, 5) the reorganization of the banking sector during banking crises, and 6) the long shadow of bank distress in the aftermath of crises.

Baron's published work has appeared in academic journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Financial Economics, and the Review of Financial Studies. His research has been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, and other media outlets. His research is funded by grants from the Institute for New Economic Thinking (INET), Governor's Woods Foundation, Cornell Center for Social Sciences, and Einaudi Center for International Studies. He has served as a visiting researcher at the Federal Reserve Board, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Baron teaches Investment and Portfolio Management and Behavioral Finance at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management, part of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, along with co-teaching sections for the Cornell-Tsinghua Finance MBA program and PhD in Management program. He has advised a variety of PhD students, postdoctoral fellows, and research assistants, who have subsequently attained positions at top-ranked academic institutions and central banks around the world.

Baron holds a PhD in economics from Princeton University and a BS in mathematics from Yale University.

Selected Publications

• Baron, Matthew; Xiong, Wei. "Credit Expansion and Neglected Crash Risk"Quarterly Journal of Economics. 132.2 (2017): 713-764
• Baron, Matthew; Brogaard, Jonathan; Hagströmer, Björn; Kirilenko, Andrei. "Risk and Return in High-Frequency Trading"Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis. 54.3 (2019): 993-1024
• Baron, Matthew. "Countercyclical Bank Equity Issuance"Review of Financial Studies. 33.9 (2020): 4186-4230
• Baron, Matthew; Verner, Emil; Xiong, Wei. "Banking Crises without Panics"Quarterly Journal of Economics. 136.1 (2021): 51-113
• Baron, Matthew; Muir, Tyler. "Intermediaries and Asset Prices: International Evidence since 1870"Review of Financial Studies. 35.5 (2022): 2144–2189
• Agarwal, Isha; Baron, Matthew. "Inflation and Disintermediation"Journal of Financial Economics. 160 (2024): 103902
• Baron, Matthew; Dieckelmann, Daniel. "Historical Banking Crises: A New Database and a Reassessment of their Incidence and Severity"Leveraged: The New Economics of Debt and Financial Fragility, Ed. Moritz Schularick. University of Chicago Press. (2022)
• Baron, Matthew; Schularick, Moritz; Zimmerman, Kaspar. "Survival of the Biggest: Large Banks and Financial Crises" (in preparation).
• Baron, Matthew; Xiong, Wei; Ye, Zhijiang. "Measuring Time-Varying Disaster Risk: An Empirical Analysis of ‘Dark Matter’ in Asset Prices" (in preparation).
• Baron, Matthew; Green, Isaac. "The Aftermath of Credit Booms: Evidence from Credit Ceiling Removals" (in preparation).

Recent Courses

• NBAT 5900 - Advanced Topics in Finance
• NBA 5980 - Behavioral Finance
• NBA 5420 - Investment and Portfolio Management
• NRE 5110 - PhD Seminar in Empirical Corporate Finance

Academic Degrees

• PhD Princeton University, 2015
• MA Princeton University, 2012
• BS Yale University, 2007