Amir Sufi

Amir Sufi is the Bruce Lindsay Distinguished Service Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and co-director of the NBER Program on Corporate Finance. He serves as an associate editor for the American Economic Review. Professor Sufi was awarded the 2017 Fischer Black Prize by the American Finance Association, given biennially to the top financial economics scholar under the age of 40. He was elected as a Fellow of the Econometric Society in 2022.

Professor Sufi's research fits within the broader fields of finance and macroeconomics. At the heart of his research is the following question: How does the arrangement of financial claims in an economy affect real outcomes such as business investment, household consumption, employment, and economic growth? While he has researched a number of topics, his main contributions have been in two areas: the role of household debt in macroeconomic fluctuations and empirical financial contracting. His research on household debt and the economy forms the basis of his book co-authored with Atif Mian: House of Debt: How They (and You) Caused the Great Recession and How We Can Prevent It from Happening Again, which was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2014. He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1999, and he earned a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005. He has been on the faculty at Chicago Booth since 2005.

Publications

"Information Asymmetry and Financing Arrangements: Evidence from Syndicated Loans," Journal of Finance (2007).

"Creditor Control Rights and Firm Investment Policy," Journal of Financial Economics (2009).

"The Consequences of Mortgage Credit Expansion: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis," Quarterly Journal of Economics (2009).

"The Political Economy of the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis," American Economic Review (forthcoming).

"House Prices, Home Equity-Based Borrowing, and the U.S. Household Leverage Crisis," American Economic Review (forthcoming).

Research Interests

• Corporate finance; household finance; financial intermediation; subprime mortgages; syndicated loans; corporate liquidity and investment.

Academic Areas

• Finance