Tania Babina, PhD, Smith School of Business

Selected Publications

Customer Data Access and Fintech Entry: Early Evidence from Open Banking. The Journal of Financial Economics 2025, with Saleem Bahaj, Greg Buchak, Filippo De Marco, Angus Foulis, Will Gornall, Francesco Mazzola, Tong Yu

• AFA; NY Fed Fintech Conference; UTD Finance Conference; EFA; NFA; NBER SI Corporate Finance; NBER Economics of Privacy Conference; UBC Winter Finance Conference; Barcelona Summer Forum; FIRS; Esade Spring Workshop(Barcelona); Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Nova SBE; HEC Workshop on Entrepreneurship; OCC Conference; NFA; Rome Junior Finance Conference; UBC Winter Finance Conference; Columbia; Erasmus University in Rotterdam; Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business; HEC Lausanne; Maastricht University; NYU WAPFIN (Women Assistant Professors in Finance); Stanford; Stockholm School of Economics; UBC; Universidad Carlos III de Madrid; USC; Wharton; NYU, MIT, OSU
• Open banking (OB) empowers bank customers to share transaction data with fintechs and other banks. 49 countries have adopted OB policies. Consumer trust in fintechs predicts OB policy adoption and adoption spurs investment in fintechs. UK microdata shows that OB enables: i) consumers to access both financial advice and credit; ii) SMEs to establish new fintech lending relationships. In a calibrated model, OB universally improves welfare through entry and product improvements when used for advice. When used for credit, OB promotes entry and competition by reducing adverse selection, but higher prices for costlier or privacy-conscious consumers partially offset these benefits.

IPOs, Human Capital, and Labor Reallocation. The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 2025, with Paige Ouimet and Rebecca Zarutskie

• AFA; NBER Entrepreneurship; Texas Finance Festival; Dartmouth PE and Entrepreneurship conference; SFS Finance Cavalcade; Changing Role of Stock Markets in Capital Formation - NYU; Annual Meetings of the Society of Labor Economics; Darden & Cambridge Judge Entrepreneurship and Innovation Research Conference
• We examine the human capital of IPO-filing firms and how going public affects their labor force. IPO-filing firms have high average wages and limited industrial diversification. Moreover, we document that a successful IPO increases departures of high-skilled employees to startups and diversification though employment growth in non-core industries. While IPOs do not significantly affect earnings growth of pre-IPO workers, post-IPO hires receive larger earnings increases upon joining. These results are most consistent with agency mechanisms associated with the transition to public ownership. Overall, going public has significant implications for the firms’ overall labor force, the firm, and labor reallocation.

Friends during Hard Times: Evidence from the Great Depression. The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 2024, with Diego Garcia and Geoff Tate

• AEA; Corporate Finance Conference (Wash-U); EFA; LBS Summer Finance Symposium; FIRS; Financial Institutions, Regulation & Corporate Governance (FIRCG) Conference; Spring Finance Conference at the UT-Dallas
• Using a novel dataset of over 3500 public and private firms, we construct the network of firm connections through executives and directors on the eve of the 1929 financial market crash. We find that more connected firms have 17% higher 10-year survival rates on average. Consistent with a role in facilitating access to working capital, the results are particularly strong for small firms, private firms, cash-poor firms, and firms located in counties with high bank suspension rates during the crisis. Moreover, connections to cash-rich firms that increase their accounts receivable during the peak of the crisis are most important for survival. Our results suggest that network connections can play a stabilizing role during a financial crisis by easing the flow of capital to constrained firms.