Areas of Expertise:
  • Capital Structure
  • Corporate Finance
  • Financial Distress and Bankruptcy
  • Mergers and Acquisitions
  • Regulation of Externalities
About
 

Biography

Matthias Kahl is a Dean’s Distinguished Visitor and adjunct assistant professor in UCLA Anderson’s Finance area. His research focuses on corporate finance, both from an empirical and a theoretical perspective.

Kahl’s main research areas are corporate restructuring, especially mergers and financial distress, and capital structure. He has also worked on the valuation of restricted stock and the regulation of corporate externalities. His papers have been published in the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis.

Kahl was previously an assistant professor of finance at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Finance at the University of Texas at Austin and Indiana University. His first faculty position was at UCLA Anderson, where he was an assistant professor of finance. 

Kahl has taught corporate finance courses at the MBA, Fully Employed MBA, Master of Accounting, undergraduate and Ph.D. levels. At UCLA Anderson, he teaches Corporate Finance in the MBA and FEMBA programs and Advanced Financial Policy for Managers in the EMBA program.

Education

Ph.D. Economics, 1997, University of Pennsylvania

M.A. Economics, 1994, University of Pennsylvania

M.Phil. Economics, 1992, University of Cambridge

 

Published Papers

Matthias Kahl, Anil Shivdasani, and Yihui Wang, “Short-Term Debt as Bridge Financing: Evidence from the Commercial Paper Market,” The Journal of Finance 70(1): 211-255, February 2015.

Gary Gorton, Matthias Kahl, and Richard Rosen, “Eat or Be Eaten: A Theory of Mergers and Firm Size,” The Journal of Finance 64(3): 1291-1344, June 2009.

Gary Gorton and Matthias Kahl, “Blockholder Scarcity, Takeovers, and Ownership Structures,” Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 43(4): 937-974, December 2008. 

Matthias Kahl, Jun Liu, and Francis A. Longstaff, “Paper millionaires: how valuable is stock to a stockholder who is restricted from selling it?” Journal of Financial Economics 67(3): 385-410, March 2003 (lead article). 

Matthias Kahl, “Economic Distress, Financial Distress, and Dynamic Liquidation,” The Journal of Finance 57(1): 135-168, February 2002. Reprinted in Edward R. Morrison (Ed.), Economics Of Bankruptcy, Edward Elgar Publishing, Northampton, Massachusetts, January 2013.

Working Papers

Sheran Deng, Eitan Goldman, and Matthias Kahl, “Regulating A Firm With Agency Problems.”

Matthias Kahl, Jason Lunn, and Mattias Nilsson, “Operating Leverage and Corporate Financial Policies.”

Dinara Bayazitova, Matthias Kahl, and Rossen Valkanov, “Value Creation Estimates Beyond Announcement Returns: Mega-Mergers versus Other Mergers.”

Matthias Kahl, “Financial Distress as a Selection Mechanism: Evidence from the United States.”

Amit Goyal, Matthias Kahl, and Walter N. Torous, “The Long-Run Stock Performance of Financially Distressed Firms: An Empirical Investigation.”