Laura Blattner

Laura Blattner is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Laura earned her Ph.D. at Harvard University. She also holds a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and an M.Phil. in Economics from Oxford University. At Stanford, Laura teaches an MBA class on Financial Technology (FinTech) as well as a Ph.D. class on empirical corporate finance.

Laura Blattner’s current research addresses how AI and machine learning can be safely and responsibly deployed in financial services. In particular, Laura's work studies how to ensure that algorithms take fair and explainable credit decisions. Recent projects study (i) how to optimally regulate algorithmic decisions when we are limited in the amount of information we can learn about the black-box prediction model and (ii) the societal costs of commercial credit scores that are less informative default predictors for disadvantaged social groups. Laura is currently partnering with the FinRegLab to evaluate emerging practices to explain, document, and govern machine learning models in credit underwriting in collaboration with several leading AI companies (press release). Other ongoing projects address how financial regulation should optimally balance competing exploitation and exploration objectives and how to navigate trade-offs between financial inclusion, prudential risk, and privacy concerns when using cash-flow data for credit underwriting.

Awards and Honors

• Louise and Claude N. Rosenberg Jr. Faculty Scholar, 2019–2020
• AQR Top Finance Graduate Award, 2018
• BlackRock Applied Research Award (Winner), 2017
• ECB Lamfalussy Fellowship, 2017
• MFM dissertation grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, University of Chicago, 2016–2017
• ERP Fellowship, German Federal Ministry of Economics, 2013

Education

• Political Economy and Government Harvard University
• Master of Philosophy (MPhil) University of Oxford (2010 — 2012)
• Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) University of Oxford (2007 — 2010)

Publications

Working Papers

• How Costly is Noise? Data and Disparities in Consumer Credit
  Laura Blattner, Scott Nelson May 17, 2021
• When Losses Turn Into Loans: The Cost of Weak Banks
  Laura Blattner, Luísa Farinha, Francisco Rebelo June 26, 2018
• What Did 1 Trillion Euros Buy Us? Evidence on the Real Effects of Quantitative Easing in Europe
  Laura Blattner, Luísa Farinha, Gil Nogueira 2018
• Debt or Demand: Which Holds Investment Back? Evidence from an Investment Tax Credit
  Laura Blattner, Luísa Farinha, Francisca Rebelo October 31, 2017
• Sovereign Debt Composition in Advanced Economies : A Historical Perspective
  S.M. Ali Abbas, Laura Blattner, Mark De Broeck, Asmaa El-Ganainy, Malin Hu September 9, 2014