About

Itay Goldstein is the Director of the Wharton Initiative on Financial Policy and Regulation (WIFPR) at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School. He heads the initiative, which was established in 2021, and focuses on research, conferences, and events at the intersection of finance, law, and policy. The initiative is under the umbrella of the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance and emphasizes scholarly engagement, student support, and public policy. As a key figure in the initiative, Itay Goldstein's role involves organizing projects such as the Business, Economic, and Financial History Project, and engaging in activities related to central banking and financial regulation. His leadership supports the broader mission of fostering research and dialogue in financial policy and regulation.

Research topics

• Economics
• Finance
• Computer Science
• Business
• Political Science
• Data Mining
• Financial economics
• Monetary economics
• Financial system
• Economic growth
• Economy
• Macroeconomics
• Data science

Selected publications

• What’s not there: Odd lots and market data

  Review of Financial Studies · 171 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Finance

  Big data is revolutionizing the finance industry and has the potential to significantly shape future research in finance. This special issue contains papers following the 2019 NBER-RFS Conference on Big Data. In this introduction to the special issue, we define the “big data” phenomenon as a combination of three features: large size, high dimension, and complex structure. Using the papers in the special issue, we discuss how new research builds on these features to push the frontier on fundamental questions across areas in finance—including corporate finance, market microstructure, and asset pricing. Finally, we offer some thoughts for future research directions.

  DOI

• Market feedback: Evidence from the horse’s mouth

  Journal of Financial Economics · 2026-02-26

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• AI-Powered Trading, Algorithmic Collusion, and Price Efficiency

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  articleOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Human Edge, Machine Limits: AI-Human Competition in Financial Markets

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• Fragility of Financial Markets

  Annual Review of Financial Economics · 2025-04-22 · 3 citations

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Fragility of financial markets arises when market prices exhibit amplified reaction to underlying shocks, either fundamental or nonfundamental. The history of financial markets features many examples of such episodes, market-wide or asset-specific, which have generally been of great concern. Using a canonical framework of trading in financial markets, we provide an overview of forces generating fragility. These forces include learning by investors from the price as they make trading decisions and various channels for strategic complementarities among investors that act against price-induced strategic substitutes. We analyze the informativeness and volatility of prices and how they are related to the fragility concept.

  PublisherDOI

• Target Allocation Funds, Strategic Complementarities, and Market Fragility

  National Bureau of Economic Research · 2025-11-01

  reportOpen accessSenior author

  Target allocation funds (TAFs) make predictable rebalancing trades to maintain portfolio weights across asset classes.During the COVID-19 stock market crash, TAFs sold $59 billion of bond fund shares and simultaneously purchased a similar amount of equity fund shares.We show that TAF rebalancing triggers strategic complementarity: bond mutual funds facing larger rebalancinginduced sales by TAFs experienced greater outflows from other non-TAF investors.This effect was particularly pronounced for illiquid bond funds and amplified total bond fund outflows during COVID-19 by an additional $27 billion.Rebalancing by TAFs, together with the strategic amplification by other investors, transmits equity market shocks to bond returns, accounting for 17% of the rise in stock-bond correlation over the past decade.

  PublisherDOI

• Target Allocation Funds, Strategic Complementarities, and Market Fragility

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Target Allocation Funds, Strategic Complementarities, and Market Fragility

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Market Feedback about Emerging Technologies *

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The role of theory in finance research

  Financial Review · 2025-04-15

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract Over the years, a big part of research in finance has been directed toward the development of new theories based on mathematical formalism. I review classic examples demonstrating the success of this approach, how it enabled transformation in analysis, and had spillovers to measurement, policy, and practice. I discuss the limitations of mathematical models and how these models should be evaluated. Finally, I argue that, despite the greater prevalence of data and empirical methods these days, there are still many opportunities for theory research. I provide some examples. Enabling these opportunities is critical for the continued progress of the field.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Luo Zuo

  National University of Singapore

  86 shared

• Shijie Yang

  Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

  85 shared

• Lucian A. Bebchuk

  National Bureau of Economic Research

  55 shared

• Alex Edmans

  London Business School

  44 shared

• Wei Jiang

  Shanghai Jiao Tong University

  40 shared

• Assaf Razin

  37 shared

• Liyan Yang

  University of Toronto

  26 shared

• Philip L. Bond

  25 shared