Michael Padhi

Professor Padhi’s research deals with financing of small, start-up, or distressed firms. His research on the impact of credit scoring of small business loan applications on low- and moderate-income areas is published in the Financial Review (with L. Woosley and S. Frame), which also won a best paper award at the 2003 Eastern Finance Association’s annual meeting. In his Ph.D. in finance, which he received from the Smith School of Business in 2010, he wrote two essays. The first examines how managerial characteristics of firms issuing floating rate convertible PIPEs (“death spirals”) relate to stock performance subsequent to issuance. In the second, he provides a theory for the performance of microfinance borrowers, and identifies optimal microcredit contract terms. He is also interested all empirical corporate finance topics. At Smith, Padhi has taught the undergraduate courses, Introduction to Business Finance (BMGT340), Investments (BMGT343), and Banking & Financial Institutions (BMGT445); and the graduate course, Capital Markets (BUFN740). He also has consulted a range of clients: the SEC, a start-up internet firm, and a small database marketing firm. Prior to his doctoral studies, Padhi was an economic analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, where he primarily worked on banking antitrust cases and published numerous Fed articles on banking. He holds a B.A. with high honors in economics from Emory University and a M.S. in business economics from Georgia State University, both in Atlanta, Georgia.