David A. Matsa

About

David A. Matsa is the Alan E. Peterson Distinguished Professor of Finance at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on the connections between labor and financial markets from both corporate and household perspectives. On the corporate side, he studies how human capital influences firms’ evaluation and funding of investment projects. On the household side, he examines how job and financial market instability affect workers’ financial resilience, employment choices, and living conditions. His recent research on corporate governance investigates the determinants and effects of gender diversity among corporate directors and executives. Professor Matsa has published widely in finance and economics, with articles appearing in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Finance. Since joining the Kellogg faculty in 2006, he has taught courses in corporate finance and business & society, and has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Finance. He has received numerous research and teaching awards, worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, and earned his Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Finance
• Business
• Accounting
• Law
• Library science
• Management
• Economics
• Pedagogy

Selected publications

• The Big Three and board gender diversity: The effectiveness of shareholder voice

  Journal of Financial Economics · 2023 · 113 citations

  PublisherDOI

• Capital Structure and a Firm's Workforce

  Annual Review of Financial Economics · 2018-11-01 · 93 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  While businesses require funding to start and grow, they also rely on human capital, which affects how they raise funds. Labor market frictions make financing labor different than financing capital. Unlike capital, labor cannot be owned and can act strategically. Workers face unemployment costs, can negotiate for higher wages, are protected by employment regulations, and face retirement risk. I propose using these frictions as a framework for understanding the unique impact of a firm's workforce…

  PublisherDOI

• Locked in by leverage: Job search during the housing crisis

  Journal of Financial Economics · 2019-11-15 · 64 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior authorCorresponding
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Do Male Workers Prefer Male Leaders? An Analysis of Principals' Effects on Teacher Retention

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2018-11-01 · 15 citations

  reportOpen access

  Using a 40-year panel of all public school teachers and principals in New York State, we explore how female principals affect rates of teacher turnover-an important determinant of school quality. We find that male teachers are about 12% more likely to leave their schools when they work under female principals than under male principals. In contrast, we find no such effects for female teachers. Furthermore, when male teachers request transfers, they are more likely to be to schools with male prin…

  PublisherDOI

• Inclusive Monetary Policy: How Tight Labor Markets Facilitate Broad-Based Employment Growth

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2022-01-01 · 13 citations

  reportOpen access

  This paper analyzes the heterogeneous effects of monetary policy on workers with differing levels of labor force attachment. Exploiting variation in labor market tightness across metropolitan areas, we show that the employment of populations with lower labor force attachment-Blacks, high school dropouts, and women-is more responsive to expansionary monetary policy in tighter labor markets. The effect builds up over time and is long lasting. We develop a New Keynesian model with heterogeneous wor…

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Jennifer Brown

  University of Utah

  150 shared

• Amalia R. Miller

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  29 shared

• Todd A. Gormley

  Washington University in St. Louis

  28 shared

• Michael Weber

  University of Chicago

  20 shared

• Michael Anderson

  University of California, Berkeley

  11 shared

• Nittai Bergman

  10 shared

• Ravi Jagannathan

  10 shared

• Joanne W. Hsu

  University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

  10 shared

Awards & honors

• John L. Weinberg/IRRCi Research Award, Semi-Finalist (2021)
• Certificate of Impact Teaching Award, Kellogg School of Mana…
• Top-40 Professor Under 40, Poets&Quants (2017)
• IRRC Institute Investor Research Award (2014)
• Certificate of Impact Teaching Award, Kellogg School of Mana…

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