New Postdoc Faculty starting Fall 2018

   Sheisha Kulkarni

 

Sheisha Kulkarni is a postdoc in the Department of Economics at the University of Virginia. Her research investigates the impact of complexity on financial decision-making and welfare. Partnering with the banking regulator in Chile, she has examined the implications of two regulations that reduced the complexity of consumer loan contracts. One project finds that standardized disclosure reduces default by forty percent, whereas the other combines structural and empirical methods to estimate an information friction parameter. For her next project, she is working with this regulator to design a randomized controlled trial on how simplified disclosure interacts with “just-in-time” financial education for borrowers. Doctor Kulkarni also works on topics related to higher education such as how the collapse in the student loan securitization market affected the number of institutions and students educated at for-profit institutions.

Her research into consumer financial decision making has been supported by an NBER’s household finance grant. She has presented her work at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Summer Session on Consumer Financial Decision Making, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Canadian Economic Association conference, and the Bank of Canada. 

Doctor Kulkarni received her PhD in Finance in 2018 from Berkeley’s Haas School of Business under Ulrike Malmendier. Before this, she worked in the Bank of Canada’s Regulatory Policy Division after completing her B.A. at McGill University.

Doctor Kulkarni will be teaching ECON 3559: Everyday Economics this spring which aims to introduce the theory and practical consideration for foundational topics in consumer finance such as borrowing, investing, insurance, and budgeting.