Ilona Babenko
	Assistant Professor since 2006
	Phone: (852) 2538-7679 Email: babenko@ust.hk
	Address: Department of Finance, HKUST, Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong

EDUCATION

Ph.D., Finance, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, 2006.

M.S., Finance, Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, 2004.

M.S., Physics, University of Minnesota, 2001.

B.S., Physics, Belarus State University (Minsk, Belarus), 1999.

TEACHING

• Advanced Managerial Finance (Undergraduate)
• Advanced Topics in Financial Management – FINA 514, MSc./MBA Program
• Corporate Finance –FINA 512, MBA
• Corporate Finance Theory – PhD

RESEARCH INTERESTS

• Corporate Finance, Agency Theory, Executive and Non-Executive Compensation, Capital Structure, Contracting Theory.

PUBLICATIONS

• “Employee Stock Options, Financing Constraints, and Real Investment,” with Michael Lemmon and Yuri Tserlukevich, forthcoming in the Journal of Finance.
• “Share Repurchases and Pay-Performance Sensitivity of Employee Compensation Contracts,” 2009, Journal of Finance 64, p. 117-151.
• “Analyzing the Tax Benefits from Employee Stock Options,” with Yuri Tserlukevich, 2009, Journal of Finance 64, 1797-1825.
• “Market Timing with CAY,” with Sandro Andrade and Yuri Tserlukevich, 2006, Journal of Portfolio Management, Winter, 70-80.

WORKING PAPERS

• “Insider Purchases and the Credibility of Open Market Share Repurchase Signaling,” (with Yuri Tserlukevich and Alexander Verdrashko).
• “Adverse Selection and Stock-Based Grants to Non-Executive Employees,” Working paper.
• “Optimal Capital Structure in the Presence of Costs of Financial Distress,” Working paper.
• “Do Non-Executive Employees Have Information? Evidence from Employee Stock Purchase Plans” (with Rik Sen) Work-in-progress.
• “Does Managerial Risk Aversion Implied by Stock Option Exercises Explain Corporate Diversification?” (with Sophie Ni) Work-in-progress.

My curriculum vita is available here (in PDF format).

Last update on December 2008

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