About

Matthew M. Harris is an Associate Professor of Religions in the Americas at The University of Chicago Divinity School. He is a scholar of race and religion in the United States, focusing his research at the intersection of African American religion, Black radical traditions, and the politics of culture. Harris aims to recover histories of struggle through his work to offer both theoretical and practical tools for reimagining the critical study of society and remaking the world. His current project, titled 'Black Religion Under the Sign of Saturn,' is a religious history exploring how outer space became a symbol of Black freedom dreams in the twentieth century. Harris holds a BA from the University of California, Los Angeles, an MDiv from Princeton Theological Seminary, and a PhD from the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His scholarly contributions have been recognized through his recent appointment as a Young Scholar in American Religion by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University Indianapolis.

Research topics

• Economics
• Monetary economics
• Business
• Financial system
• Finance
• Microeconomics

Selected publications

• Intermediary Capital and the Credit Market

  Management Science · 2024 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Business
  • Economics
  • Financial system

  We propose a tractable framework to examine the role of intermediary capital in the allocation and pricing of credit. In our model, regulated financial intermediaries compete with unregulated investors, targeting distributions of heterogeneous borrowers. We derive a sufficient statistic that characterizes intermediaries’ cross-sectional lending decisions and provide a novel intermediary asset pricing equation that accounts for the endogenous segmentation of marginal investors across securities. These formulae reveal the central role of intermediaries’ shadow cost of capital in both credit allocation and pricing. Our results can concurrently rationalize a broad array of empirical facts documented in the context of credit markets. This paper was accepted by Tomasz Piskorski, finance. Funding: This work was supported by Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs minnesfond [Grant 2021.0122].

  PublisherDOI

• The Aggregate Demand for Bank Capital

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Monetary economics
  • Business
  • Economics

  We propose a novel conceptual approach to transparently characterizing credit market outcomes in economies with multi-dimensional borrower heterogeneity. Based on characterizations of securities' implicit demand for bank equity capital, we obtain closed-form expressions for the composition of credit, including a sufficient statistic for the provision of bank loans, and a novel cross-sectional asset pricing relation for securities held by regulated levered institutions. Our framework sheds light on the compositional shifts in credit prior to the 07/08 financial crisis and the European debt crisis, and can provide guidance on the allocative effects of shocks affecting both banks and the cross-sectional distribution of borrowers.

  Publisher

• The Aggregate Demand for Bank Capital

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2020-09-01 · 9 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  We propose a novel conceptual approach to transparently characterizing credit market outcomes in economies with multi-dimensional borrower heterogeneity. Based on characterizations of securities' implicit demand for bank equity capital, we obtain closed-form expressions for the composition of credit, including a sufficient statistic for the provision of bank loans, and a novel cross-sectional asset pricing relation for securities held by regulated levered institutions. Our framework sheds light on the compositional shifts in credit prior to the 07/08 financial crisis and the European debt crisis, and can provide guidance on the allocative effects of shocks affecting both banks and the cross-sectional distribution of borrowers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The Aggregate Demand for Bank Capital

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2020 · 7 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Economics
  • Monetary economics
  • Business
  PublisherDOI

• Why Do Firms Sit on Cash?: An Asymmetric Information Approach

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2017-01-01 · 6 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Intellectual Property Contracts: Theory and Evidence from Screenplay Sales

  Journal of Law Finance and Accounting · 2017-11-06 · 5 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This paper presents a model of contracts for the sale of intellectual property. We explain why many intellectual property contracts are contingent on eventual production or success, even without moral hazard on the part of risk-averse sellers. Our explanation is based on differences of opinion between buyers and sellers with regard to the seller’s competence. Unlike signaling models, our framework is founded on learning by buyers and sellers and on the sellers’ reputation building. Thus, we are able to derive predictions regarding the impact of the seller’s experience on the nature of the contract. In particular, our model predicts that more experienced sellers will be offered a different mix of cash and contingency payments than inexperienced sellers. We also discuss the probability of sales as a function of seller and product characteristics. Some predictions of the theoretical models are supported by an analysis of screenplay sales data.

  PublisherDOI

• Why Do Firms Sit on Cash? An Asymmetric Information Approach

  The Review of Corporate Finance Studies · 2017-06-29 · 24 citations

  article1st author

  In this paper, we build a simple formal model of cash holdings that can explain this and other empirical regularities. Our model is based on the well-known “lemons” problem associated with equity issuance. We show that firms with poor growth opportunities and those with excellent opportunities will not hold excess cash, whereas firms with opportunities in the middle range will hold excess cash. We derive empirical implications relating excess cash to the extent of asymmetric information, growth opportunities, value of assets in place, and cash holding costs. Received March 29, 2017; editorial decision June 12, 2017 by Editor Uday Rajan.

  PublisherDOI

• Microeconomic Developments and Macroeconomics

  American Economic Review · 2016-01-01 · 2 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We explore the implications of contract theory with regard to the effectiveness of aggregate economic policy. More specifically, we consider the relationship between contractually induced price rigidities and monetary policy. In examining this relationship, we restrict ourselves to market-clearing equilibrium models. In particular, we do not consider disequilibrium type models such as those of Robert Barro and Herschel Grossman (1976). Since Keynes' The General Theory, economists have blamed unemployment and economic fluctuations on sticky nominal wages. Until recently, however, there were no plausible explanations of this rigidity. About ten years ago, several scholars independently advanced the hypothesis that real wage stickiness might in fact be the result of contractual arrangements. This general idea (in the form of nominal wage stickiness) was subsequently applied to show that monetary policy affects real output by inducing additional flexibility in the real wage and can therefore be used to stabilize output fluctuations. While these arguments are based on explicit (rational expectations) macroeconomic models, no comparably articulated model of contracts is provided to account for the nominal wage stickiness. Our purpose here is to examine these arguments critically from the perspective of an explicit contractual model which

  Publisher

• Macroprudential Bank Capital Regulation

  2015-01-01 · 3 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  We propose a general equilibrium framework to examine the system-wide eects of bank capital requirements. In our model banks can serve a socially benecial role of monitoring rms that are credit rationed by public markets, but banks’ access to deposit insurance creates socially undesirable risk-shifting incentives. Equity capital ratio requirements reduce banks’ risk taking incentives, but may also constrain banks’ balance sheets. In this environment, increased eciency

  Publisher

• How to get banks to take less risk and disclose bad news

  Journal of Financial Intermediation · 2014-06-19 · 20 citations

  article1st author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Artur Raviv

  37 shared

• Marcus M. Opp

  14 shared

• Christian C. Opp

  University of Rochester

  12 shared

• René M. Stulz

  6 shared

• George M. Constantinides

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  5 shared

• Bengt Holmström

  5 shared

• S. Abraham Ravid

  3 shared

• Robert M. Townsend

  Massachusetts Institute of Technology

  2 shared

Awards & honors

• Young Scholar in American Religion by the Center for the Stu…