Sabrina Howell is an expert in corporate finance, venture capital (VC), private equity (PE), entrepreneurship, and FinTech. She focuses on how capital structures, innovation, and digital transformation shape economic outcomes.
Professor Howell has testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee on energy innovation policy and PE in healthcare. Her research on automation in lending was cited in the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB’s) final rule on open banking.
Expert analysis of FinTech and entrepreneurial finance issues
Professor Howell analyzes the impact of technological disruption in the financial sector. She has analyzed how lender automation and predictive algorithms in FinTech platforms can affect credit access and valuation accuracy. She has examined initial coin offerings (ICOs) and blockchain-based token sales as mechanisms for financing growth.
In her research on PE and VC, Professor Howell has studied the impact of buyouts on service delivery, patient welfare, and job quality. For example, her research documents how infrastructure fund ownership of global airports improves outcomes for passengers and the local economy. She has analyzed how pitch contests and other screening tools help investors to identify high-potential firms, facilitating the flow of capital to emerging businesses. Professor Howell has also evaluated the role that research and development (R&D) grants and investor tax credits play in the startup ecosystem.
Award-winning publications on private equity and cryptocurrency
Professor Howell has published her research in premier finance and economics journals, including the Journal of Finance, the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Review of Financial Studies, and the Journal of Political Economy. She has received best paper awards for articles focused on cryptocurrency token sales, private equity investment, and networking frictions in VC, among other topics.
Professor Howell serves as an associate editor at the Review of Financial Studies, the Review of Corporate Finance Studies, and Management Science.
The London Business School honored Professor Howell with its prestigious AQR Asset Management Institute Young Researcher Award, which recognizes consequential research relevant to asset management, finance, and related disciplines. Her work has been widely cited in the news media, including by Bloomberg, the New York Times, NPR, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.
Teaching experience and academic leadership
At Harvard Business School, Professor Howell has taught the Entrepreneurial Finance M.B.A. elective course, as well as a Ph.D. course on entrepreneurship and innovation.
Previously, as a tenured professor in the Department of Finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, Professor Howell created and taught a course titled “Applications in Entrepreneurial Finance: Fintech,” offered both to M.B.A. and undergraduate students.
Professor Howell is a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a fellow at the Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER). She is also a research fellow at the Private Equity Research Consortium (PERC), a collaborative initiative with the Institute for Private Capital (IPC) that supports research on private capital and alternative investments.
Before entering academia, Professor Howell worked as an energy consultant.