About

Heitor Almeida is the Stanley C. and Joan J. Golder Distinguished Chair in Corporate Finance and serves as the academic director of iDegrees at Gies College of Business. He joined the University of Illinois in 2007 and also works as a research associate for the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research specialties include financial constraints, liquidity management, business groups, financial distress, innovation, and stock repurchases. Almeida has held roles such as associate editor for several financial journals and is currently in that role for the Journal of Financial Intermediation, with plans to become managing editor at the Journal of Corporate Finance in January 2021. His academic background includes two BAs from Brazilian universities, a master's degree in economics from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, and a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago. He has held various academic positions, including professor of finance, director of the finance PhD program, and visiting professor, contributing extensively to research and teaching in the field of finance.

Research topics

• Business
• Finance
• Monetary economics
• Economics
• Computer Science
• Financial system
• Mathematics
• Genetics
• Biology
• Engineering
• Statistics

Selected publications

• Corporate Resiliency and the Choice Between Financial and Operational Hedging

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-01-01 · 3 citations

  reportOpen access

  We investigate how firms manage financial default risk (on debt) and operational default risk (on delivery obligations). Financially constrained firms reduce operational hedging through inventory and supply chain in favor of cash holdings. Our model predicts that firms’ markup increases with financial default risk as they cut operational hedging costs. Empirical analysis confirms this prediction and shows that the markup-credit risk relationship strengthens during adverse aggregate shocks, particularly for firms exposed to lending disruptions. Market power alone cannot explain this relationship, which reflects firms’ strategic adjustments in operational hedging practices.

  PublisherDOI

• Are Share Repurchases Really Flexible?

  Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis · 2025-03-28

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract This article documents a trend of declining flexibility in share repurchase policies over the last 4 decades. We show that repurchases have become particularly sticky for firms with repurchase programs in place. We also exploit the additional inflexibility within existing repurchase programs to show that repurchase stickiness can have real effects for firms. Using the 2008 financial crisis as a shock to firms’ ability to raise capital, we find that firms with ongoing share repurchase programs ending after Dec. 2007 reduced investment, employment, and R&D spending by more than similar firms with programs ending before the onset of the crisis.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• How Does Health Insurance Affect Firm Employment and Performance? Evidence from Obamacare

  Management Science · 2025-10-30

  article1st authorCorresponding

  This article discusses how mandating employers to provide health insurance of a minimum quality and the associated increases in health insurance premia affect firm employment and performance. Using firm-level employee health insurance data around the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), we show that the PPACA is associated with a significant increase in health insurance premia for employees in company-sponsored health insurance plans. In response, employers with greater exposure to the PPACA reduce employee enrollments in their health insurance plans to a larger extent after the law’s enactment. Our analysis suggests that employers achieve this reduction in enrollment by shifting employment composition from full-time employees to part-time, temporary, or seasonal workers, who are not covered in employer-sponsored health insurance plans. Furthermore, we find no evidence of deterioration in performance at companies more exposed to the increase in health insurance premia. Overall, our findings illustrate how firms adapt to and mitigate cost increases associated with regulatory changes through strategic labor practices. This paper was accepted by Lin William Cong, finance. Supplemental Material: The online appendix and data files are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.03761 .

  PublisherDOI

• Corporate Resiliency and the Choice between Financial and Operational Hedging

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• A Quantile Model of Investment

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How Do Financing Frictions Shape Export Activity? The Firm Balance-Sheet Channel

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• How Do Short-Term Incentives Affect Long-Term Productivity?

  Review of Financial Studies · 2024-10-03 · 9 citations

  article1st author

  Abstract Previous research shows that incentives to meet short-term earnings targets can cause firms to increase share buybacks, leading to cuts in investments and employment. Using plant-level census data, we find that incentives to engage in earnings-per-share-motivated buybacks result in lower productivity at both the plant and firm level. We attribute this productivity drop to two mechanisms: reduced investment in productivity-augmenting technology, and inefficient allocation of resources across a firm’s plants. We identify multiple frictions—including labor unions, financial constraints, agency problems, and adjustment costs—that can constrain efficient reallocations across plants and thus exacerbate the consequences of firms’ short-term incentives.

  PublisherDOI

• The Working Capital Credit Multiplier

  The Journal of Finance · 2024-08-27 · 18 citations

  articleOpen access1st author

  ABSTRACT We provide novel evidence that funding frictions can limit firms’ short‐term investments in receivables and inventories, reducing their production capacity. We propose a credit multiplier driven by these considerations and empirically isolate its importance by comparing how a similar firm responds to shocks differently when these shocks are initiated in their most profitable quarter (“main quarter”). We implement this test using recurring and unpredictable shocks (e.g., oil shocks) and provide extensive evidence supporting our identification strategy. Our results suggest that funding constraints and credit multiplier effects are significant for smaller firms that heavily rely on financing from suppliers.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Innovation Under Pressure

  Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis · 2024-05-08 · 11 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Firms become more efficient at innovation activities when they face pressure to meet earnings per share (EPS) targets using stock repurchases. Using a regression-discontinuity framework, we find that incentives to engage in “EPS-motivated buybacks” are followed by more citations and higher values for firms’ new patents. We trace these effects to improved allocation of R&D resources and a greater focus on novel innovation. The positive effects are concentrated among ex ante “innovation-efficient” firms that achieve better patenting outcomes after reorganizing (but not cutting) their R&D investments. Our findings illustrate that short-term earnings pressure can act through a free cash flow channel that motivates more efficient spending.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Information Asymmetry Index: The View of Market Analysts

  arXiv (Cornell University) · 2024-09-10 · 3 citations

  preprintOpen access

  The purpose of the research was to build an index of informational asymmetry with market and firm proxies that reflect the analysts' perception of the level of informational asymmetry of companies. The proposed method consists of the construction of an algorithm based on the Elo rating and captures the perception of the analyst that choose, between two firms, the one they consider to have better information. After we have the informational asymmetry index, we run a regression model with our rating as dependent variable and proxies used by the literature as the independent variable to have a model that can be used for other researches that need to measure the level of informational asymmetry of a company. Our model presented a good fit between our index and the proxies used to measure informational asymmetry and we find four significant variables: coverage, volatility, Tobin q, and size.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Murillo Campello

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  172 shared

• Michael S. Weisbach

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  99 shared

• Viral V. Acharya

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  85 shared

• Daniel Wolfenzon

  65 shared

• Filippo Ippolito

  38 shared

• Igor Cunha

  National Institute for Space Research

  32 shared

• Vyacheslav Fos

  26 shared

• Ander Pérez-Orive

  Federal Reserve

  26 shared

Labs

• Disruption LabPI

Education

• Ph.D., Finance

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  2000

• M.S., Finance

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1995

• B.S., Finance

  University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

  1993

Awards & honors

• Stanley C. and Joan J. Golder Distinguished Chair in Corpora…
• Excellence in Online & Distance Teaching, University of Illi…
• UIUC Research Board Grant, University of Illinois at Urbana-…