Gilles Chemla

Gilles is a Professor of Finance at Imperial College Business School and Co-director of Imperial's Centre for Financial Technology. He is also a research fellow at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, a research fellow at Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a senior research fellow at the Rimini Centre for Economic Analysis (RCEA), and a member of the American Finance Association, American Economic Association, Western Finance Association, and European Finance Association. He currently serves as an Associate Editor at the Journal of Empirical Finance.

Gilles holds a PhD in economics from the London School of Economics, an MSc in economics from the Paris School of Economics, and he is a graduate engineer from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. Prior to joining Imperial, Gilles was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. He has also worked in corporate finance at BNP Paribas, as an independent consultant for a variety of corporate, financial, and governmental institutions and professional and international organisations, and he has served in a wide range of boards.

Gilles' research interests include corporate finance, corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, private equity and venture capital, capital budgeting, capital structure, corporate risk management, energy markets, security design and securitization, debt markets, asset allocation, pension funds, crowdfunding, fintech, financial regulation and policymaking, mathematical modelling as well as data science in finance, economics, and medicine. Gilles' research has been published in top academic journals, and has been presented at multiple institutions including Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Princeton, UCLA, Columbia, NYU, Minnesota, LBS, LSE, Oxford, Cambridge, and Insead.

Gilles' most recent articles examine

1. Financial technology

Chemla, G., and K. Tinn, 2020, "Learning through Crowdfunding", Management Science, 66 (5), 1783-1801 (lead article).

Chemla, G., and K. Tinn, 2020, "How wise are crowds on crowdfunding platforms?", Handbook of Alternative Finance, Cambridge University Press, Raghu Rau, Robert Waldrop, Luigi Zingales (eds).

Chemla, G., and M. Milone, 2021, "Does machine learning reduce financial constraints", in progress.

1. Causal inference in finance, economics, medicine and social sciences

Hennessy, C., and G. Chemla, 2021, "Signaling, Instrumentation, and CFO Decision-Making", Journal of Financial Economics, conditionally accepted.

Chemla, G., and C. Hennessy, 2021, "Equilibrium Counterfactuals", International Economic Review.

Chemla, G., and C. Hennessy, 2021, "Signaling and the limitations of random assignment for causal effect measurement in the social sciences", in progress.

Chemla, G., and C. Hennessy, 2020, "Rational Expectations and the Paradox of Policy-Relevant Experiments", Journal of Monetary Economics.

Chemla, G., and C. Hennessy, 2019, "Controls, Belief Updating, and Bias in Medical RCTs", Journal of Economic Theory.

1. Corporate finance, corporate governance, and asset management

Atanasova, C., and G. Chemla, 2020, "Familiarity Breeds Alternative Investment: Evidence from Corporate Defined-Benefit Pension Plans", Review of Finance, third round.

Chemla, G., A. Rivera, and L. Shi, 2021, "Equilibrium Executive Ccompensation", mimeo

Gilles has had several advisory or other non-executive director roles, and he has interacted with a large number of corporations, financial institutions, regulators, policy-makers, and international organizatons. He is also an accomplished teacher who has lectured a wide variety of degree and executive education courses and obtained several teaching prizes.

Selected Publications

Journal Articles

Hennessy C, Chemla G, Signaling, instrumentation, and CFO decision-making, Journal of Financial Economics, ISSN:0304-405X

Open Access Link Chemla G, Hennessy C, 2021, Equilibrium counterfactuals, International Economic Review, Vol:62, ISSN:0020-6598, Pages:639-669

DOIPublisher Web LinkOpen Access Link Chemla G, Hennessy C, 2020, Rational expectations and the paradox of policy-relevant natural experiments, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol:114, ISSN:0304-3932, Pages:368-381

DOIOpen Access Link Chemla G, Tinn K, 2020, Learning through Crowdfunding, Management Science, Vol:66, ISSN:0025-1909, Pages:1783-1801

DOIPublisher Web LinkOpen Access Link Chemla G, Christopher Hennessy, 2019, Controls, belief updating, and bias in medical RCTs, Journal of Economic Theory, Vol:184, ISSN:0022-0531

DOIOpen Access Link Chemla GH, Hennessy CA, 2016, Government as borrower of first resort, Journal of Monetary Economics, Vol:84, ISSN:0304-3932, Pages:1-16

DOIOpen Access Link Chemla G, Hennessy C, 2014, Skin in the game and moral hazard, The Journal of Finance, Vol:69, ISSN:1540-6261, Pages:1597-1641

DOI Aid R, Chemla G, Porchet A, et al., 2011, Hedging and Vertical Integration in Electricity Markets, Management Science, Vol:57, ISSN:0025-1909, Pages:1438-1452

Author Web Link Bettignies J, Chemla G, 2007, Corporate venturing, allocation of talent, and competition for star managers, Management Science, Vol:54, ISSN:1526-5501, Pages:505-521

DOIAuthor Web LinkOpen Access Link Chemla, G., Habib, M., Ljungqvist, 2007, An analysis of shareholder agreements, Journal of the European Economic Association, Vol:5, ISSN:1542-4766, Pages:93-121