Aymeric Bellon, Ph. D. Candidate

RESEARCH INTERESTS
Corporate Finance, Bankruptcy, Sustainable Finance, Entrepreneurship, Energy and Climate Finance

PUBLICATIONS
Personal Wealth, Self-Employment, and Business Ownership (joint with J. Anthony Cookson,
Erik Gilje and Rawley Heimer) Review of Financial Studies. (2021) 34(8): 3935-3975.
We study the effect of personal wealth on entrepreneurial decisions using data on mineral payments from Texas shale drilling to individuals throughout the United States. Large cash windfalls increase business formation by 0.8 to 2.1 percentage points, but do not affect transitions to self-employment. By contrast, cash windfalls signifcantly extend self-employment spells, but do not aect the duration of business ownership. Our fndings help reconcile contrasting fndings in prior work: liquidity constraints have different effects on entrepreneurial activity that may depend on the entrepreneur’s motivations.

WORKING PAPERS
Fresh Start or Fresh Water: The impact of Environmental Lender Liability (JMP)
This paper investigates how the environmental liability of lenders aects debtors’ behavior. I use U.S.
Census Bureau micro-data and the passage of the Lender Liability Act as a novel identiiccation strategy
to answer this question. Firms increase on-site pollution, cut investment in abatement technology, and
incur 17.54% more environmental regulatory violations when secured lenders become less responsible
for the cleanup cost of their collateral. The eects are stronger for rms close to bankruptcy or with
high environmental risks. This lower environmental compliance slightly benefits employment, but does
not change wages or production. Overall, Financial constraints that may be alleviated due to reduced
lender liability do not result in pollution mitigation investment or increased production; instead, my
findings suggest that reduced lender liability lessens banks’ incentives to in uence the practices of their
debtors.

Disclaimer: The biographical information is as of the date of posting.