Dates: April 10 & 11, 2025
Location: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Ten Independence Mall, Philadelphia, PA 19106 (Directions to the Fed)
Registration by April 3 and recommended hotel: Use this link
Want the big picture? Official websites are here for University of Delaware, and here for Philly Fed
Questions? udfedconf@udel.edu
This is a single-stream conference. FinTrack and TechTrack sessions are for all participants. FinTrack sessions have discussants. TechTrack sessions have extra time for Q&A.
Thanks to our Program Commitee (listed below the Agenda).
Speakers' names in bold
8:00AM Light breakfast
8:30 AM Welcome remarks by Robert M. Hunt, Senior Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, and Oliver Yao, Dean, Lerner College of Business of the University of Delaware and a representative of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
9:00 AM - 10:20 AM Fintech Financing of Payments (FinTrack)
Session Chair: Qianqian Yu (Lehigh University)
Buy Now Pay (Less) Later: Leveraging Private BNPL Data in Consumer Banking
Christine Laudenbach (SAFE and Goethe University)
Elin Molin (Lund University)
Talina Sondershaus (Lund University)
Kasper Roszbach (Norges Bank)
Discussant:
Andrew Herzberg, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
The Welfare Benefits of Pay-As-You-Go Financing
Paul Gertler (University of California, Berkeley)
Brett Green (Washington University in St. Louis)
Renping Li (Washington University in St. Louis)
David Sraer (University of California, Berkeley)
Discussant:
Sean Higgins, Kellogg School, Northwestern University
10:40AM-12:00Noon Regulation and Credit Supply (FinTrack)
Session Chair: Ben Collier (Temple University)
Regulating Credit: Effects on Market Structure, Lender Technologies, and Credit Access
Susan Cherry (Stanford University)
Discussant:
Barry Scholnick, University of Alberta
The Decline of Branch Banking
Rajesh Narayanan (Louisiana State University)
Dimuthu Ratnadiwakara (Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond)
Philip Strahan (Boston College & NBER)
Discussant:
Shohini Kundu, University of California at Los Angeles
12:00-12:30PM Featured Speaker
Patrick Harker, President, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
12:30PM-1:30PM Lunch
1:30PM-2:50PM Digital Payments Systems and Economic Effects (FinTrack)
Session Chair: Michelle Lowry (Drexel University)
Digital Payments and Monetary Policy Transmission
Pauline Liang (Stanford University)
Matheus Sampaio (Northwestern University)
Sergey Sarkisyan (The Ohio State University)
Discussant:
Naz Koont, Stanford University
Financial Innovation, Labor Markets, and Wage Inequality: Evidence from Instant Payment Systems
Jacelly Cespedes (University of Minnesota)
Carlos Burga (PUC-Chile)
Carlos Parra (PUC-Chile)
Bernardo Rica (Insper)
Discussant:
Nishant Vats, Olin School, Washington University at St. Louis
3:20PM-5:00PM Fintech and Changes (Tech Track Session)
Session Chair: Gang Wang (University of Delaware)April 11.
Fighting Climate Change with FinTech
Antonio Gargano (University of Houston)
Alberto Rossi (Gerogetown University)
Preliminary Lessons Learned from the Change Healthcare Nationwide Pharmacy Outage
William Yurcik (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services)
Andreas Schick (U.S. Food & Drug Administration)
Matrix profile enhanced Bayesian online change point detection for Bitcoin ETF trading
Masoud Neshastehriz (University of Delaware)
Paul Laux (University of Delaware)
5:00PM Reception
Onsite, at the Fed
5:00PM Student Poster Session, concurrent with reception
Explainable Portfolio Management Using Offline Reinforcement Learning, by Gahzaleh Zehtab (University of Delaware)
Do Closing Minority Depository Institutions Affect Credit in Their Communities, by Noara Razzak (Clemson University)
Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is: Financial Stakes and Cognitive Biases on Decentralized Prediction Markets, by Ziyi Zhao (Temple University)
Lender Specialization and Public Information Dissemination, by Hyun Jun Yoo (Graduate Center, CUNY)
The Readability Levels in Annual Reports of Chinese Listed Companies and the Manipulative Behaviors of Managers for Self-serving Incentives, by Shi Chen (University of Delaware)
8:00AM Light breakfast
8:30 AM Welcome remarks by Vice Provost Kim Isett, University of Delaware
8:50AM-10:10AM Technology, Data, and Potential Outcomes (FinTrack)
Session Chair: Valentina Bruno (American University)
AI Coordination and Self-Fulfilling Financial Crises
Hao Yang (Swiss Finance Institute and USI Lugano), via Zoom
Discussant:
Winston Dou, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Levelling the Field: Equitable Interest Rates for Unsecured Personal Loans
Ram Gopal (University of Warwick)
Xiao Qiao (City University of Hong Kong)
Moris Strub (University of Warwick)
Zonghao Yang (Stevens Institute of Technology)
Discussant:
Violet Chen (Stevens Institute of Technology)
10:10AM-10:30AM Coffee break
10:30-11:30 Keynote Speaker (FinTrack)
Stefan Nagel (University of Chicago)
Asset pricing in a high-dimensional world
11:30AM-12:10PM Blockchains for better and for worse Part A (FinTrack)
Session Chair: Vitaly Meursault (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
Learning from DeFi: Would Automated Market Makers Improve Equity Trading?
Katya Malinova (DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University)
Andreas Park (University of Toronto)
Discussant:
Joseph Abadi (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
12:10PM-1:10PM Lunch
Ramayya Krishnan (Carnegie Mellon University)
From Policy to Practice: Research Directions and the Journey to “Responsible AI by Design”
2:10PM-2:50PM Blockchains for better and for worse Part B (FinTrack)
Session Chair: Vitaly Meursault (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
Anatomy of a Crypto Bank Run
Yuan Gao (University of Arizona)
Richard Sias (University of Arizona)
Discussant
Jonathan Rose, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
2:50-3:20 Coffee Break
3:20-4:20 Technology-driven innovations (TechTrack)
Session Chair: Yu Zhu (University of Delaware)
Generative AI for Modeling Customer Behavior: Exploring Effective Intervention Strategies
Xuewen Han (Tsinghua University)
Kunpeng KZ Zhang (University of Maryland)
Sean Xin Xu (Tsinghua University)
LeverEdge: On-Chain Leveraged Tokens
Reza Rahimian (Concordia University)
Jeremy Clark (Concordia University)
4:20 Conference scheduled to end. Please allow 15 extra minutes in travel schedules in case of slippage
Program Committee
Joseph Abadi (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
Tetyana Balyuk (Emory University)
Jack Bao (University of Delaware)
Sunita Chandrasekaran (University of Delaware)
Bintong Chen (University of Delaware)
John D'Arcy (University of Delaware)
Michael De Lucia (US Army ARL, UD)
Sebastian Doerr (Bank for International Settlements)
Laura Field (University of Delaware)
Paul Goldsmith-Pinkham (Yale)
Charles Gouert (NVIDIA Research)
Deeksha Gupta (John Hopkins University)
Vinu Joseph (NVIDIA)
Jinwook Lee (Drexel University)
Wenli Li (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
Chen Liu (Intel)
Dimitris Mouris (Nillion)
Marina Niessner (Indiana University)
Ashish Pujari (Google)
Sebastian Doerr (Bank for International Settlements)
Xiao Fang (University of Delaware)
Alberto Rossi (Georgetown University)
Philip Strahan (Boston College)
James Vickery (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
Wujie Wen (NC State University)
Jiaheng Xie (University of Delaware)
Jiafeng Xie (Villanova University)
David Yermack (New York University)
Gloria Yang Yu (Singapore Management University)
Xu Yuan (University of Delaware)
Yao Zeng (University of Pennsylvania)
Kunpeng Zhang (University of Maryland)
Tianjian (TJ) Zhang (California State University Dominguez Hills)
Hong-Sheng Zhou (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Yu Zhu (University of Delaware)
Organizing Committee
Conference Chair:
Paul Laux (University of Delaware)
Fin Track Chairs:
Michael Gelman (University of Delaware)
Vitaly Meursault (Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia)
Tech Track Chairs:
Nektarios Tsoutsos (University of Delaware)
Gang Wang (University of Delaware)