BOSTON — A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor won the James A. Lebenthal Memorial "Excellence in Municipal Finance Research" prize for best paper submitted at the fourth annual Brandeis Municipal Finance Conference.
Pab Jotikasthira's
Jotikasthira, an assistant professor for finance at UNC's Kenan-Flagler School, is a former senior strategist and portfolio manager for the Bank of Thailand's reserve management division. Tania Babina, Chotibhak Jotikasthira, Christian Lundblad, and Tarun Ramadorai assisted him.
"Our main finding in this paper is that high levels of domestic ownership of government debt may not be an unadulterated good," they wrote. "States with such high domestic holdings have bonds which are more subject to liquidity and political risk, and face difficulties raising finance to support capital investments during crises."
Further research, they said, would examine the effects of such financial frictions.
Washington University in St. Louis sponsored the $2,500 prize, named in honor of municipal bond icon Lebenthal, who died last November at age 86. Lebenthal spoke at previous Brandeis conferences.
The conference features academics, practitioners, regulators, and issuers who discuss the changing state of municipal capital markets.
