My research and teaching focus on entrepreneurial finance, innovation, fintech, private equity, and China. In 2023 I was named a Poets & Quants Best 40 Under 40 MBA Professor. I am a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research, and a Research Fellow at the Institute for Private Capital.

I serve as an Associate Editor for the Review of Financial Studies and the Review of Corporate Finance Studies.

Please click on the underlined titles below to view the papers.

NON-PEER REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

1. "Government Intervention in Innovation." 2024. Annual Review of Financial Economics, 16:367–90.

2. "VC Funds and Regulation D’s Rule 506(c): Did Permitting General Solicitation Open the Door for Emerging and Underrepresented Managers?" With Dean Parker. Small Business Capital Formation Report for the Securities and Exchange Commission Office of the Advocate for Small Business Capital Formation. October, 2024.

3. "The role of private equity in the U.S. economy, and whether and how favorable tax policies for the sector need to be reformed." With Arpit Gupta. The Washington Center for Equitable Growth. 2023.

4. Private Equity in Healthcare. With Tong Liu. In: Cumming, D., Hammer, B. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Private Equity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. 2023

5. "Mechanisms and Impacts of Innovation Policy." NBER Reporter. December, 2022.

6. "How Resilient is Venture-Backed Innovation? Evidence from Four Decades of US Patenting." With Josh Lerner, Ramana Nanda, and Richard Townsend. 2021.

7. "Analysis of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy and Fossil Energy SBIR Programs." U.S. Department of Energy Report. Press release here. 2019.

8. “Leapfrogging or Stalling Out? Electric Vehicles in China.” With Henry Lee and Adam Heal. Discussion Paper, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. 2014.

9. “Pathways for Reducing Oil Consumption in the U.S.” Carbon War Room & Fuel Freedom Foundation Research Report. 2013.

10. “Jia You! (Add Oil!): Chinese Energy Security Strategy.” In Luft, Gal and Anne Korin, eds. Energy Security Challenges for the 21 Century. California: Praeger Publishing. 2009.

11. “An Assessment of the Robustness of Visual Air Quality Preference Study Results.” With Anne E. Smith. Environmental Protection Agency Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (EPA CASAC) Particulate Matter Review, Public Comments, March 30. 2009.

PEER-REVIEWED PUBLICATIONS

Professor of Finance

Sabrina T. Howell

WORKING PAPERS

1. "Opening up Military Innovation: Causal Effects of ‘Bottom-Up’ Reforms to U.S. Defense Research." With Jason Rathje, John Van Reenen and Jun Wong. 2023. R&R at The Journal of Political Economy.
WRDS Award for Best Empirical Finance Paper at the WFA 2021.

2. "Local Journalism under Private Equity Ownership." With Michael Ewens and Arpit Gupta. 2022. R&R at The Review of Financial Studies.

3. "All Clear for Takeoff: Evidence from Airports on the Effects of Infrastructure Privatization." With Yeejin Jang, Hyeik Kim, and Michael S. Weisbach. 2024. R&R at The Review of Financial Studies.

4. "After the Storm: How Emergency Liquidity Helps Small Businesses Following Natural Disasters." With Benjamin Collier and Lea Rendell. 2024.

5. "Leveraged Payouts: How Using New Debt to Pay Returns in Private Equity Affects Firms, Employees, Creditors, and Investors." With Abhishek Bhardwaj and Abhinav Gupta. 2024.

6. “Tyranny of the Personal Network: The Limits of Arm’s Length Fundraising in Venture Capital.” With Dean Parker and Ting Xu. 2024.

1. "Regulatory Arbitrage or Random Errors? Implications of Race Prediction Algorithms in Fair Lending Analysis ." With Daniel Greenwald, Cangyuan Li, and Emmanuel Yimfor. 2024. The Journal of Financial Economics, 157.

2. "Lender Automation and Racial Disparities in Credit Access." With Theresa Kuchler, David Snitkof, Johannes Stroebel, and Jun Wong. 2024. The Journal of Finance, 79(2).

3. "Does Private Equity Investment in Healthcare Benefit Patients? Evidence from Nursing Homes." With Atul Gupta, Constantine Yannelis, and Abhinav Gupta. 2024. The Review of Financial Studies, 37(4). Lead Article & Editor's Choice.
Best Paper Prize in Finance and Health at the 2021 MFA

Finalist for 2024 NIHCM Research Award ($20,000 prize)

4. "Cutting the Innovation Engine: How Federal Funding Shocks Affect University Patenting, Entrepreneurship, and Publications." With Tania Babina, Alex He, Elisabeth Perlman, and Joseph Staudt. 2023. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 895–954.
NYU Stern Yuki Arai Faculty Award for Best Paper in Finance 2021.

5. "Investor Tax Credits and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from U.S. States." With Matthew Denes, Filippo Mezzanotti, Xinxin Wang, and Ting Xu. 2023. The Journal of Finance, 78(5).

6. “Do Employees Cheer for Private Equity? The Heterogeneous Effects of Buyouts on Job Quality .” With Will Gornall, Oleg Gredil, Xing Liu, and Jason Sockin. 2024. Management Science (pre-print DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.00951).

7. "Do Cash Windfalls Affect Wages? Evidence from R&D Grants to Small Firms." With J. David Brown. 2023. The Review of Financial Studies, 36(5).

8. "Entrepreneurial Spillovers from Corporate R&D ." With Tania Babina. 2024. The Journal of Labor Economics, 42(2).
Honorable Mention, Yuki Arai Faculty Research Prize for Finance, 2018

9. "Networking Frictions in Venture Capital, and the Gender Gap in Entrepreneurship." With Ramana Nanda. 2024. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 59(6).
Private Equity and Venture Capital Tuck School of Business Award at the 2020 MFA

10. “Reducing Information Frictions in Venture Capital: The Role of New Venture Competitions.” 2020.
The Journal of Financial Economics, 136 (3).

11. "When Investor Incentives and Consumer Interests Diverge: Private Equity in Higher Education." With Charlie Eaton and Constantine Yannelis. 2020. The Review of Financial Studies, 33 (9).
Best Paper Prize at the 2018 UNC Private Equity Research Council Annual Symposium

12. "Initial Coin Offerings: Financing Growth with Cryptocurrency Token Sales." With Marina Niessner and David Yermack. 2020. The Review of Financial Studies, 33 (9). Lead Article & Editor's Choice.

13. "IPO Intervention and Innovation: Evidence from China.” With Lin William Cong. 2021. Management Science, 67 (11).

Management Science Best Paper Prize in Finance (among all papers published 2020-2022)

14. "Learning from Feedback: Evidence from New Ventures.” 2021. Review of Finance, 25. Lead Article & Editor's Choice.

15. "Firm Type Variation in the Cost of Risk Management.” 2020. The Journal of Corporate Finance, 64.

16. “Joint Ventures and Technology Adoption: A Chinese Industrial Policy that Backfired .” 2018. Research Policy, 47(8).

17. “Financing Innovation: Evidence from R&D Grants .” 2017. The American Economic Review, 107 (4).

18. “Plugging Cars into the Grid: Why the Government Should Make a Choice.” With Minsk, Ronald E., Sam P. Ori. 2009. Energy Law Journal ,30(2).

Professor of Finance​

Professor of Finance