Christopher J. Malloy
Associate Professor of Business Administration, Marvin Bower Fellow
Christopher Malloy is an Associate Professor in the Finance Unit and Marvin Bower Fellow at Harvard Business School, and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Prior to joining HBS in 2007, Professor Malloy was an Assistant Professor in the Finance Department at London Business School, where he was on faculty from 2003-2007.
Professor Malloy currently teaches the first semester core finance course at HBS, and has previously taught courses in equity investment management and behavioural finance. His research focuses on asset pricing, investments and portfolio choice, labour economics, behavioural finance, and empirical corporate finance. His research has appeared in the Journal of Political Economy and the Journal of Finance, and been described in The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and various other media outlets.
Professor Malloy received a PhD in Finance and an MBA from The University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and a BA in Economics from Yale University. Before beginning his doctoral studies, he worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in Washington, DC in the Monetary and Financial Studies Section.
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Do Powerful Politicians Cause Corporate Downsizing?
This paper employs a new empirical approach for identifying the impact of government spending on the private sector. Our key innovation is to use changes in congressional committee chairmanship as a source of exogenous variation in state-level federal xpenditures. In doing so, we show that fiscal spending shocks appear to significantly dampen corporate sector investment and employment activity. This retrenchment follows both Senate and House committee chair changes, occurs in large and small firms and within large and small states, and is most pronounced among geographically-concentrated firms. The effects are economically meaningful and the mechanism - entirely distinct from the more traditional interest rate and tax channels - suggests new considerations in assessing the impact of government spending on private sector economic activity.
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Legislating Stock Prices
In this paper we demonstrate that legislation has a simple, yet previously undetected impact on firm stock prices. While it is understood that the government and firms have an important relationship, it remains difficult to determine which firms any given piece of legislation will affect, and how it will affect them. By observing the actions of legislators whose constituents are the affected firms, we can gather insights into the likely impact of government legislation on firms. Specifically, focusing attention on “interested” legislators’ behavior captures important information seemingly ignored by the market. A long-short portfolio based on these legislators’ views earns abnormal returns of over 90 basis points per month following the passage of legislation. Further, the more complex the legislation, the more difficulty the market has in assessing the impact of these bills. Consistent with the legislator incentive mechanism, the more concentrated the legislator’s interest in the industry, the more informative are her votes for future returns.