Viral V. Acharya

Biography

Viral V. Acharya is the C.V. Starr Professor of Economics in the Department of Finance at New York University Stern School of Business (NYU-Stern). Viral was a Deputy Governor at the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) during 23rd January 2017 to 23rd July 2019 in charge of Monetary Policy, Financial Markets, Financial Stability, and Research. His speeches while at the RBI were released in July 2020 in the form of a book titled Quest for Restoring Financial Stability in India (SAGE Publications India), with a new introductory chapter Fiscal Dominance: A Theory of Everything in India. He is or has been an Academic Advisor to the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago, Cleveland, New York and Philadelphia, and the Board of Governors, and provided Academic Expert service to the Bank for International Settlements, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. He is a member of the Climaterelated Financial Risk Advisory Committee (CFRAC) of the Financial Stability Oversight Council for 2023-26.

Viral completed Bachelor of Technology in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai in 1995 and Ph.D. in Finance from NYU-Stern in 2001. Prior to joining Stern, he was at London Business School (2001-2008), the Academic Director of the Coller Institute of Private Equity at LBS (2007-09) and a Senior Houblon-Normal Research Fellow at the Bank of England (Summer 2008). At Stern, Viral co-edited the books Restoring Financial Stability: How to Repair a Failed System, John Wiley & Sons, March 2009, Regulating Wall Street: The Dodd-Frank Act and the New Architecture of Global Finance, John Wiley & Sons, November 2010, Dodd-Frank: One Year On, NYU-Stern and CEPR (released on voxeu.org), July 2011, and SVB and Beyond: The Banking Stress of 2023 (released as CEPR Rapid Response Economic Report), August 2023. He is also the co-author of the book Guaranteed to Fail: Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Debacle of Mortgage Finance, Princeton University Press, March 2011 and Harper Collins (India), June 2011.

His primary research interest is in theoretical and empirical analysis of systemic risk of the financial sector, its regulation and its genesis in government- and policy-induced distortions, an inquiry that cuts across several other strands of research – credit risk and liquidity risk, their interactions and agency-theoretic foundations, as well as their general equilibrium consequences, as well as climate-change related risks. He has published articles in the American Economic Review, Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Review of Finance, Journal of Business, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Rand Journal of Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics, Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, and Financial Analysts Journal.

Viral received the inaugural Banque de France – Toulouse School of Economics Junior Prize in Monetary Economics and Finance, 2011, and was awarded the 2017 Alexandre Lamfalussy Senior Research Fellowship of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). He has been a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher, 2020-22, and his articles have won several best paper prizes at journals and conferences. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in Corporate Finance, a Research Affiliate at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), and Research Associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute (ECGI).

Viral is currently editor of the Journal of Law, Finance and Accounting (2014-16, 2020-), member of the Editorial Committee of the Annual Review of Financial Economics (2022-), Board member of the Financial Intermediation Research Society (2023-), and was an editor of the Journal of Financial Intermediation (2009-12) and associate editor of the Journal of Finance (2011-14). Viral has also been the Director of the National Stock Exchange (NSE) of India and the NYU-Stern Initiative on the Study of Indian Capital Markets, a Director of Western Finance Association, and a member of the Economic Advisory Committee of the Financial Industry Regulation Authority (FINRA), International Advisory Board of the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), Advisory Council of the Bombay (Mumbai) Stock Exchange (BSE) Training Institute, and Academic Research Council Member of the Center for Advanced Financial Research And Learning (CAFRAL, India). He was the Deutsche Bank Visiting Chair Professor, National Institute of Securities Markets, India, 2021-22.

Research Interests

• Regulation of banks and financial institutions
• Sovereign debt and international finance
• Corporate finance
• Credit risk and valuation of corporate debt
• Asset pricing with a focus on the effects of liquidity risk

Courses Taught

• Bankruptcy and Credit Risk (Undergraduate and MBA)
• Corporate Finance Theory - Part II (Finance PhD Core)
• Financial History of the US: From the Panic of 1907 to Silicon Valley Bank (Undergraduate and MBA)
• Nexus of Sovereign and Financial Risks (PhD Elective)

Academic Background

B.Tech., Computer Science and Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology

Ph.D., Finance
New York University Stern School of Business