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Adriano A. Rampini

Douglas and Josie Breeden Distinguished Professor of Financial Economics
Fuqua School of Business
A442 Fuqua School of Business, 90120, Durham, NC 27708

Overview


Adriano Rampini is a Professor of Finance and Economics in the finance area at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business with a secondary appointment in the Department of Economics and is the Lewis Cook III Research Fellow.  Professor Rampini received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1998 and was on the faculty at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management prior to joining Fuqua in 2006.

Professor Rampini’s expertise is in financial economics and macroeconomics.  He has studied the procyclical nature of capital reallocation as well as the variation of entrepreneurial activity and default over the business cycle.  He has also shown that financially constrained firms lease capital assets instead of buying them and buy used capital assets instead of new ones.  His recent work considers the dynamics of risk management and explains why poorly capitalized firms typically do not engage in risk management, a fact previously considered a puzzle.  He is also studying household risk management, the role of collateral in determining the capital structure, and the effect of the capitalization of financial intermediaries on financing and the macro economy. In addition, he is interested in the role of government.

Professor Rampini’s research has been published in journals such as the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Monetary Economics, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Journal of Economic Theory.  He received an Alfred P. Sloan Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, was an invited speaker at the Review of Economic Studies European Meetings, and received the 2008 Jensen Second Prize for the best paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics in the areas of corporate finance and organizations.  He currently serves as the President of the Finance Theory Group and as a Director of the Western Finance Association.  He is a Research Fellow of the Centre for Economic Policy Research.  He was a consultant to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and New York and a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, in the department of economics at MIT, and in the finance area at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.  In the 2012/2013 academic year, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics and Associate of the Department in the department of economics at Harvard University.

Current Appointments & Affiliations


Douglas and Josie Breeden Distinguished Professor of Financial Economics · 2022 - Present Fuqua School of Business
Professor of Business Administration · 2013 - Present Fuqua School of Business
Professor of Economics · 2013 - Present Economics, Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

In the News


Published March 24, 2022
Untangling the Risk Management Paradox

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Recent Publications


Constrained-Efficient Capital Reallocation

Journal Article American Economic Review · February 1, 2023 We characterize efficiency in an equilibrium model of investment and capital reallocation with heterogeneous firms facing collateral constraints. The model features two types of pecuniary externalities: collateral externalities, because the resale price of ... Full text Cite

Risk Management in Financial Institutions

Journal Article Journal of Finance · April 1, 2020 We study risk management in financial institutions using data on hedging of interest rate and foreign exchange risk. We find strong evidence that institutions with higher net worth hedge more, controlling for risk exposures, across institutions and within ... Full text Cite

Financing Insurance

Scholarly Edition · May 2019 Cite
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Education, Training & Certifications


The University of Chicago · 1998 Ph.D.
University of St. Gallen (Switzerland) · 1991 B.S.