Olivier Darmouni, PhD, Columbia Business School

Research Interests

Credit markets, monetary policy, energy transition

Working Papers

Brown Capital (Re)Allocation with Yuqi Zhang. New version coming soon! Data on Coal Power Plant Ownership in Europe

We study who owns coal power plants – the largest single source of carbon emissions – in Europe. A sharp increase in private firms’ ownership was met by a large decline in public equity ownership. This decline was not driven by public equity investors selling plants, but by their scaling down of plants quickly. State investors played a crucial role, selling to private firms and slowly scaling down their plants. We calibrate a model in which asset owners vary in how they value externalities. Nationalization by state investors that value social factors (jobs, “energy security”) can hinder “green finance” in decreasing emissions.

Non-Bank Lending to Mid-Size Firms in Europe: Evidence from Corporate Securities with Melina Papoutsi. New version!

Using newly available micro-data, this paper documents new evidence on the rise of non-bank credit to mid-size firms in the euro area. Recent new issuers of debt securities are typically small, private, and unrated. Their spreads are comparable to high-yield bonds. Traditional “buy-and-hold” investors are small for unrated and smaller issuers, while non-bank intermediaries are large. These non-bank intermediaries were however as stabilizing as insurers during the March 2020 turmoil. Nevertheless, the subsequent bond issuance wave was restricted to large and rated firms. This market thus more closely resembles “private debt” markets than the traditional bond market.