About

Valentin Haddad is an associate professor of finance at UCLA Anderson School of Management and a research fellow for the National Bureau of Economic Research’s asset pricing program. He joined UCLA from Princeton University. Haddad's academic background includes a joint Ph.D. in economics and finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and Department of Economics, as well as an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. His undergraduate studies were in applied mathematics and economics at Ecole Polytechnique in France. His research interests focus on asset pricing and macroeconomics with financial frictions. Haddad investigates how financial institutions trade and manage risk, and how their practices influence market prices and the broader economy. His work challenges conventional wisdom, such as his recent study on life insurance company investments, which revealed that these investments are riskier than traditionally thought and are driven by long-term profit motives. Haddad emphasizes the importance of understanding the complex interactions between human behavior, institutions, and market forces, aiming to find organized ways to study the world’s economic and financial systems.

Research topics

• Economics
• Business
• Monetary economics
• Finance
• Financial system
• Financial economics
• Engineering
• Actuarial science
• Geography

Selected publications

• Data and Code for: Whatever It Takes? The Impact of Conditional Policy Promises

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-02-09

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Replication code for the article "Whatever It Takes? The Impact of Conditional Policy Promises"<br>

  PublisherDOI

• Data and Code for: Whatever It Takes? The Impact of Conditional Policy Promises

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-02-09

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Replication code for the article "Whatever It Takes? The Impact of Conditional Policy Promises"<br>

  PublisherDOI

• Data and Code for: Whatever It Takes? The Impact of Conditional Policy Promises

  ICPSR Data Holdings · 2026-02-09

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Replication code for the article "Whatever It Takes? The Impact of Conditional Policy Promises"<br>

  PublisherDOI

• How Competitive Is the Stock Market? Theory, Evidence from Portfolios, and Implications for the Rise of Passive Investing

  American Economic Review · 2025-02-28 · 29 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  The conventional wisdom in finance is that competition is fierce among investors: if a group changes its behavior, others adjust their strategies such that nothing happens to prices. We estimate a demand system with flexible strategic responses for institutional investors in the US stock market. When less aggressive traders surround an investor, she adjusts by trading more aggressively. However, this strategic reaction only counteracts two-thirds of the impact of the initial change in behavior. In light of these estimates, the rise in passive investing over the last 20 years has made the demand for individual stocks 11 percent more inelastic. (JEL G11, G14, G23, G41)

  PublisherDOI

• Intermediaries and Asset Prices

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Market Macrostructure: Institutions and Asset Prices

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Causal Inference for Asset Pricing

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01 · 5 citations

  preprintOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Intermediaries and Asset Prices

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-08-01 · 2 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Intermediary asset pricing posits that financial institutions are important players in financial markets, and that their decisions shape asset prices beyond simply reflecting the preferences of the average household in the economy.We explain how the intermediary-asset pricing approach helps make sense of empirical patterns in the data: the excess volatility of asset prices, differences in price movements across asset classes, the cross section of expected returns within asset classes, and specific arbitrages and price dislocations.We also review how this view of price fluctuations has important implications for macroeconomic dynamics, international economics, and policy.In particular, the role of financial regulation and monetary policy in alleviating constraints or removing risk from intermediary balance sheets during periods of stress is central in this approach.We highlight both existing progress and gaps for future research.

  PublisherDOI

• Market Macrostructure: Institutions and Asset Prices

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Market macrostructure studies the broad organization of financial markets into key players and institutional features, and how this organization affects the level and dynamics of asset prices. We present a simple model to discuss when, why, and how market macrostructure matters for asset prices. We then review work on three specific examples: the rise of passive investing in the stock market, the increased role of central banks in bond markets through asset purchase programs, and the role of levered financial intermediaries in financial markets. We highlight various approaches to tackling macrostructure questions including quasi-natural experiments, equilibrium models, and the use of detailed quantity data on asset positions.

  PublisherDOI

• Market Macrostructure: Institutions and Asset Prices

  Annual Review of Financial Economics · 2025-07-18

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Market macrostructure studies the broad organization of financial markets into key players and institutional features and how this organization affects the level and dynamics of asset prices. We present a simple model to discuss when, why, and how market macrostructure matters for asset prices. We then review work on three specific examples: the rise of passive investing in the stock market, the increased role of central banks in bond markets through asset purchase programs, and the role of levered financial intermediaries in financial markets. We highlight various approaches to tackling macrostructure questions including quasi-natural experiments, equilibrium models, and the use of detailed quantity data on asset positions.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Erik Loualiche

  46 shared

• Tyler Muir

  Anderson University - South Carolina

  44 shared

• Matthew Plosser

  Federal Reserve Bank of New York

  42 shared

• David Sraer

  University of California, Berkeley

  10 shared

• Shrihari Santosh

  University of Colorado Boulder

  9 shared

• Nina Boyarchenko

  8 shared

• Marianne Andries

  8 shared

• Serhiy Kozak

  8 shared