Felipe Severino consults on consumer finance, corporate valuation, and capital markets issues, with a focus on credit, mortgage markets, personal bankruptcy, and entrepreneurial finance. Dr. Severino analyzes consumer and small business borrowing, residential and commercial real estate, the valuation of corporate and derivative instruments, and the consequences of credit risk for banks.
Dr. Severino served as a visiting researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he evaluated household debt and consumer credit issues. He is also a research associate with the G53 Network, a research network focused on financial literacy and personal finance.
Research on household credit and mortgage markets
Drawing on loan-level, court record, and credit registry data, Dr. Severino evaluates how credit supply affects housing prices, household leverage, and delinquency. His research examines the effect of personal bankruptcy protection on household borrowing and the differences in credit conditions across segments of the mortgage market. He has also analyzed out-of-court settlements with debt collectors and the financial outcomes consumers experience in those negotiations.
Another strand of Dr. Severino’s work investigates housing booms and busts, including patterns of loan origination and default among middle-class borrowers. His current research examines regional bank exposure to commercial real estate risk and the effect of annuities on retirement outcomes.
Corporate valuation, capital markets, and entrepreneurial finance
A former academic, Dr. Severino has extensive experience teaching courses in corporate finance, M&A, and entrepreneurial finance. He has also developed teaching cases on leveraged buyout valuation and cost of capital.
Dr. Severino’s research on entrepreneurship examines how homeowners use home equity as collateral to finance small business formation. His early work on derivative valuation, including a multi-commodity model of futures prices, received the KRX Best Paper Award at the Asia Pacific Association of Derivatives conference.
Publications, editorial roles, and presentations
Dr. Severino has published articles in leading academic journals, including the Journal of Financial Economics, the NBER Macroeconomics Annual, and the Annual Review of Financial Economics. Two of his articles in the Review of Financial Studies earned Editor’s Choice recognition, and his work on the financial crisis was the runner-up for the Reviews’ Michael J. Brennan Best Paper Award.
He is an associate editor of the Journal of Banking and Finance and has served on the program committees of the Western Finance Association, the Society for Financial Studies Cavalcade, Financial Intermediation Research Society, and the European Finance Association.
Dr. Severino has delivered research presentations to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors; the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia; and the Central Bank of Chile.
He has also presented at professional and academic meetings, including the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Research Conference. Dr. Severino has led research seminars at Columbia Business School; Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University; the London School of Economics and Political Science; Stanford Graduate School of Business; the Stern School of Business, New York University; and the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, among others.
Academic and teaching appointments
Before joining Cornerstone Research, Dr. Severino spent more than a decade on the faculty of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, where he taught corporate finance and capital markets to students in the M.B.A. and Master of Engineering Management programs.
Dr. Severino has held visiting scholar appointments at the Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finance in Rome, Italy.