J. Anthony Cookson  
Associate Professor of Finance 
Leeds School of Business
University of Colorado at Boulder
(tony [dot] lastname [at] colorado.edu)

Working Papers

Personal wealth and self-employment (with Aymeric Bellon, Erik P. Gilje and Rawley Z. Heimer). SSRN. NBER WP #27452.
Revise and Resubmit, Review of Financial Studies.

Does partisanship shape investor beliefs? Evidence from the COVID-19 pandemic (with Joey Engelberg and Will Mullins). SSRN. SocArXiv. 
Revise and Resubmit, Review of Asset Pricing Studies.

Imprecise and informative: Lessons from market reactions to imprecise disclosure (with S. Katie Moon and Joonki Noh). SSRN.

Shale shocked: The long run effect of wealth on household debt (with Erik P. Gilje and Rawley Z. Heimer).
Video of SFS Cavalcade presentation of work-in-progress.  
   We are updating the paper. Some elasticities will differ somewhat in the next version.

Echo chambers (with Joey Engelberg and Will Mullins). SSRN. Video.

Publications

A text-based analysis of corporate innovation (with Gustaf Bellstam and Sanjai Bhagat). 
Management Science. Forthcoming. SSRN. Data. 
Outstanding Paper in Corporate Finance at the 2017 Midwest Finance Association Conference.

Assortative matching and reputation in the market for first issues (with Oktay Akkus and Ali Hortacsu)
Management Science. Forthcoming. SSRN. MS.

Why don't we agree? Evidence from a social network of investors (with Marina Niessner).
Journal of Finance. Vol 75, No 1 (February 2020), pp. 173-228. JF. SSRN.
Best Paper at the 2017 Front Range Finance Seminar.

Growing up without finance (with James R. Brown and Rawley Z. Heimer)
Journal of Financial Economics. Vol 134, No 3 (December 2019), pp. 591-616. JFE. SSRN.
One of Top 100 Papers in the Financial Times List of Business School Research with Social Impact.

Does contract enforcement mitigate hold up? 
Review of Corporate Finance Studies, Vol 7, No 2 (September 2018), pp. 245-275. RCFS. SSRN.

When saving is gambling. 
Journal of Financial Economics. Vol 129, No 1 (July 2018), pp. 24-45. JFE. SSRN. 
Talk of the Town Award at the 2015 Finance Down Under Conference

Anticipated entry and entry deterrence: Evidence from the American casino industry. 
Management Science. Vol 64, No 5 (May 2018), pp. 2325-2344. MS. SSRN. 

Law and finance matter: Lessons from externally-imposed courts (with James R. Brown and Rawley Z. Heimer). 
Review of Financial Studies Vol 30, No. 3 (March 2017), pp. 1019-1051. RFS. SSRN.
Best Paper in Financial Markets and Institutions at the 2015 FMA Conference.

Courting economic development (with James R. Brown and Rawley Z. Heimer). 
World Bank Economic Review. Vol 30, No Supp 1 (March 2017). WBER.

Leverage and strategic preemption: Lessons from entry plans and incumbent investments. 
Journal of Financial Economics Vol 123, No 2 (February 2017), pp. 292-312. JFE. SSRN.

Determinants of bank mergers: A revealed preference analysis (with Oktay Akkus and Ali Hortacsu).  
Management Science. Vol. 62, No. 8 (August 2016), pp. 2241-2258. MS. SSRN.

Institutions and casinos: An empirical analysis of the location of Indian casinos. 
Journal of Law and Economics. Vol 53, No. 4 (November 2010), pp. 651-687. Jstor.

Data and Programs

Daily investor disagreement data (overall, within investment philosophy and across investment philosophies, 2010-2018).

If you use these data, please cite the following publication, which develops, validates and uses the disagreement measures:
Why don't we agree? Evidence from a social network of investors by J. Anthony Cookson and Marina Niessner, Journal of Finance Vol 75, No 1 (February 2020), pp. 173-228.

Text-Based Innovation Data. 
Data and README in compressed folder.
Main measure and "negative" text-based innovation, 1990-2010.

Innovation word lists + README in compressed folder.  
This file contains most salient words from our innovation topic, as well as an alternative derived from Princeton's WordNet database.  Disclaimer: If you use these word lists on corpora outside of our sample, you should provide validation that it is useful in your context.

If you use these data, please cite the following publication, which develops, validates and uses the innovation measures:
A text-based analysis of corporate innovation by Gustaf Bellstam, Sanjai Bhagat, and J. Anthony Cookson, Management Science, Forthcoming. 

Two-step assortative matching code (R code that implements our two-step assortative matching estimator to correct for selection bias).

If you use this code, please cite the following publication, which develops and validates the technique with application to reputation in IPO underpricing:
Assortative matching and reputation in the market for first issues by Oktay Akkus, J. Anthony Cookson and Ali Hortacsu, Management Science, Forthcoming.


Works in Progress

Several paper ideas related to Wealth shocks and household finances: Evidence from mineral royalty payments (with Erik P. Gilje and Rawley Z. Heimer).
Funded by NBER-HF Small Grants Program.

Anatomy of financial frictions: A fresh look at private firms (with James R. Brown, Rawley Z. Heimer, and Ivan Ivanov).
Presented at 2015 FRA Early Ideas Session.

Teaching

At Leeds School of Business (2013 - present)
Quantitative Methods (MSBC 5030 -- a master's statistics and programming course). Summers 2015, 2016, 2017, Fall 2018, and Fall 2019
Investments (MBAX 6200 -- a MS finance course). Fall 2018, Fall 2019.
Foundations of Financial Analysis (FNCE 2010 -- a calculus and statistics course). Spring 2018 Term (2 Sections).
 Empirical Methods in Finance (FNCE 7200 -- a doctoral research seminar). Spring 2016, Spring 2018.
Investments (FNCE 3030 -- an undergraduate finance course). Spring 2014, Spring 2015, Spring 2016.
 Managerial Economics (MSBC 5015 -- a master's of finance core course). Summer 2015.

I taught extensively at UChicago while pursuing my Ph.D.  I self-published a textbook from notes I developed while teaching at Montana State University.  I did the same with some econometrics notes I developed while teaching Honors Econometrics at Chicago.  In addition, you might find my YouTube channel interesting or useful.

Current and Upcoming Academic Activities

  • Co-director of Consumer Financial Decision Making Center (since Fall 2018, with Phil Fernbach).  And, co-organizer of the Boulder Summer Conference.
  • Organizer of Finance in the Cloud, a series of virtual conferences.
  • Co-organizer of the Colorado Finance Summit. 
  • Director of the MS in Finance program at CU Boulder (since Fall 2018).
  • Scheduled Seminars: Indiana University (October 9th), Norwegian School of Economics (October 15th).
For more information about my past presentations, service, advising, refereeing, etc., check out my CV.

Miscellaneous and Personal

Father of two exceptional children. Husband to my high school sweetheart.

Favorites:
Economist: Tie between Ronald Coase and Gary Becker.
Movie: Forrest Gump.
Country (outside of US): Switzerland
City: London
Special Administrative Region: Hong Kong
US State: Montana
YouTube Channel: Relaxing Piano Music. 
Spotify: Infinite Acoustic. 

Other passions: