Welcome to my website!
I am a fourth-year PhD candidate in Accounting at Bocconi University and I will be on the job market for the academic year 2025/26.
​
My research primarily focuses on firms’ signaling through voluntary disclosure, with an emphasis on managers' commitment to payout policy. I am also interested in topics related to investors’ processing costs and firm valuation. In my Job Market Paper, I investigate how managers’ disclosure choices are influenced by the processing costs faced by their targeted retail investors, leveraging a unique setting involving dividend investors.
​
In the 2023-24 academic year, I was a visiting PhD student at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the Bocconi PhD program, I obtained my Bachelor's and Master's degrees from Bocconi University and worked for a consulting company. ​​
​
Working Papers
While the role of processing costs in retail investors' trading behavior is well-established, it is unclear whether managers account for these costs in their disclosure decisions. As retail investors base their investment decisions on publicly available corporate disclosures, I hypothesize that managers consider the information processing costs of targeted retail investors when making disclosure choices. I test this prediction in a setting where the benefits of disclosing to institutional investors remain constant, while the benefits of disclosing to retail investors increase due to a plausibly exogenous reduction in their processing costs. Specifically, I examine managerial dividend guidance choices following the initial coverage of an influential social media analyst specialized in dividend-paying firms. Leveraging a novel dataset of dividend-related statements and utilizing ChatGPT to classify their content, I find that managers increase dividend forecasts following the reduction in retail dividend investors' processing costs. Consistent with dynamic disclosure theory, the decision to provide dividend forecasts signals managers’ commitment to the dividend policy. These findings suggest that managers strategically time their disclosures to engage targeted retail investors effectively.
Retail Investors’ Processing Costs and Disclosure Timing
(Solo Authored - Job Market Paper)
Available Upon Request
Commitment through Forecasting: Managerial Buyback Guidance and Payout Policy
(With Z. Kaplan, L. Vollon, X. Wu)
R&R at Journal of Accounting and Economics
We develop a novel database of buyback guidance forecasts and use this database to examine the association between buyback guidance and actual repurchase policy. Motivated by dynamic disclosure theory, which shows that current disclosure creates expectations of future disclosure, we argue that repurchase policy is jointly determined with the decision to issue guidance. While buyback guidance usually covers only the current fiscal year, we hypothesize that short-term buyback forecasts signal a long-term commitment to repurchases. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that firms issuing buyback guidance repurchase more shares, exhibit more persistent repurchase behavior, and continue to issue guidance in the future. We find larger market reactions to the first instance of buyback guidance, consistent with our proposed mechanism that the initial forecast signals a shift to a more intensive capital return policy. Tests examining the determinants of guidance and subsequent changes in repurchase intensity suggest a key driver of forecast issuance is the potential for repurchases to be accretive, increasing earnings per share. Examining the costs of this commitment, we find no evidence that guiders substitute investment for repurchases but do find evidence forecasting firms pay 1-5% more for their repurchased shares.
Payout Policy, Innovation Value and Investors' Beliefs
(with T. Martens)
We examine whether a firm’s payout policy influences investors' beliefs about the value of its investments. We argue that the uncertainty underlying the investment process and the commitment implied by the payout policy jointly affect investors' valuation of a firm's investment. Leveraging the high uncertainty surrounding the timing and outcomes of the innovation process, we predict managers will increase their payout commitments as uncertainty resolves positively. Consistent with this hypothesis, we find that managers with more successful and valuable innovations raise sticky dividends while reducing more flexible share repurchases. The higher commitment of dividend payments implies a different information value for investors compared to share repurchases. By exploiting the plausibly exogenous timing of patent grants (i.e., the resolution of uncertainty), we provide asset-level evidence that investors assign a higher value to patents granted following dividend increases but find no evidence they do so following repurchase authorizations. Taken together, our findings suggest that innovative firms adjust their payout commitments based on the expected value of current investments in innovation, prompting investors to update their beliefs accordingly.
Teaching
a/y 2024/25
-
Financial Statement Analysis
Student Evaluations Mean: 9.25/10 - 46 students​
Ranked in the top 8% of faculty members (600+)
a/y 2022/23
-
Microeconomics
Student Evaluations Mean: 8.75/10 - 88 students​ -
​Intermediate Financial Accounting
Student Evaluations Mean: 8.29/10 ​ - 51 students
LECTURER
​​
TEACHING ASSISTANT
a/y 2020/21 and 2021/22
-
Financial Statement Analysis​
-
Fair Value Accounting, Reporting and Valuation
-
Intermediate Financial Accounting
-
Performance Measurement and Control System