
Niels Gormsen
· Clinical Professor of FinanceVerifiedUniversity of Chicago · Booth School of Business
Active 2016–2026
About
I am a professor of finance at Copenhagen Business School (on leave from University of Chicago). My research focuses on corporate finance, asset pricing, and financial economics. I have worked on topics such as the cost of capital, equity valuations, and the impact of financial crises on stock prices and growth expectations.
Research topics
- Economics
- Monetary economics
- Financial economics
- Finance
- Econometrics
- Geography
- International economics
- Business
Selected publications
Interest Rates and Equity Valuations
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01
preprintOpen access1st authorCorrespondingInterest Rates and Equity Valuations
National Bureau of Economic Research · 2026-02-01
reportOpen access1st authorCorrespondingA large body of work has sought to measure the effect of interest rates on equity valuations.The challenge in doing so is that both are endogenous, and their comovement depends on the forces driving interest-rate changes.To address this problem, we develop and estimate a decomposition that splits movements in real rates into three structural drivers: changes in expected growth, risk, or "pure discounting."We show that only pure discount-rate shocks transmit one-for-one to equity valuations, with little or negative transmission of growth and risk shocks.Implementing our decomposition with a global panel of growth expectations and asset prices, we find a weak unconditional relation between valuations and real rates but a strong relation with the pure discounting component, which explains 80% of cross-country valuation changes since 1990.In the U.S., we find that 35% of the interest-rate decline is attributable to pure discounting, implying that only a fraction of the change in rates has passed through directly to equities.We use the decomposition to revisit evidence on the role of interest rates in explaining price variation, and to study higher-frequency returns, cross-sectional rate exposures, duration-matched equity premia, and reactions to monetary policy.
Interest Rates and Equity Valuations
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2026-01-01
preprintOpen access1st authorCorrespondingCode for: Corporate Discount Rates
ICPSR Data Holdings · 2025-04-30
datasetOpen access1st authorCorrespondingThe code in this replication package creates the figures and tables in the paper and the appendix of "Corporate Discount Rates."
Firms’ Discount Rates and Investment
CBS Research Portal (Copenhagen Business School) · 2025-01-01
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingAmerican Economic Review · 2025-05-30 · 17 citations
article1st authorCorrespondingWe construct a dataset of firms’ discount rates (i.e., required returns to capital) and perceived cost of capital using corporate conference calls. The relation between discount rates and the cost of capital is far below the one-to-one mapping assumed in standard theory, as it takes many years for changes in the cost of capital to be incorporated into discount rates. This pattern leads to large and time-varying discount rate wedges that affect firm investment. Moreover, increasing discount rate wedges can account for the recent puzzle of “missing investment.” Cross-firm variation in market power and riskiness explains the evolution of wedges. (JEL D22, E43, G12, G31, G32)
Firms' Perceived Cost of Capital
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 7 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingFirms' Perceived Cost of Capital
SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01
articleOpen access1st authorCorrespondingSSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01 · 1 citations
articleOpen accessNational Bureau of Economic Research · 2024-09-01 · 9 citations
reportOpen access1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 17 shared
Ralph S. J. Koijen
- 8 shared
Lasse Heje Pedersen
New York University
- 7 shared
Kilian Huber
- 7 shared
Eben Lazarus
University College London
- 5 shared
Kilian Huber
University of Luxembourg
- 5 shared
Emanuele Colonnelli
- 3 shared
Mihir Gandhi
- 3 shared
Andrea Frazzini
Capital University
Education
Ph.D., Finance
University of Chicago
B.A.
Copenhagen Business School
Awards & honors
- 2024 Moskowitz Prize
- 2025 De La Vega Prize
- Fama-DFA Prize 2020 (second prize)
- Roger F Murray Price 2018
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