James R. Thompson, Associate Professor of Finance

James R. Thompson

School of Accounting and Finance
The University of Waterloo
+1 (519) 888-4567 ext. 38601
james .at. uwaterloo .dot. ca

View CV

Academic Positions

Co-Director, Computing and Financial Management (CFM), University of Waterloo, June 2019-Present
Associate Professor of Finance, School of Accounting and Finance, University of Waterloo, 2015-Present
Co-President, Northern Finance Association, September 2021-2022
Assistant Professor of Finance, School of Accounting and Finance, University of Waterloo, 2009-2015
Visiting Assistant Professor of Finance, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, Jan 2012-July 2012

Short Term Visiting Positions

Visiting Assistant Professor of Economics, University of Auckland, Feb-March 2014
Visiting Researcher, Reserve Bank of New Zealand, Jan-Feb 2014
Visiting Researcher, Center for Economic Studies (Munich), Aug-Sept 2012
Visiting Researcher, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, July 2009.

Research Interests

Risk Transfer Markets, Banking, Insurance
Compensation in Organizations

Education

Ph.D. - Economics, Queen's University (2008)
Masters - Economics, Financial Specialization, Queen's University (2003)
Bachelors - Computer Science and Economics, University of Western Ontario (2002)

Publications

Counterparty Risk in Financial Contracts: Should the Insured Worry about the Insurer?, August 2010. Quarterly Journal of Economics. Note that this link requires journal access. For an older working paper version, click here to visit ssrn.

Using the case of credit risk insurance in banking, we explore the consequences of counterparty risk on the contracting parties. Click here and here to view the not for publication appendices which include an additional extension of the model and the key results without the limited liability assumption on the insurer.

CDS as Insurance: Leaky Lifeboats in Stormy Seas, (with Eric Stephens), July 2014. Journal of Financial Intermediation
- Theoretical analysis of credit default swaps to determine the features that drive counterparty risk and the differences between these contracts and traditional insurance.
Separation Without Exclusion in Financial Insurance, (with Eric Stephens), December 2015. Journal of Risk and Insurance
- We show how separation of insured party types can be obtained when insurers cannot preclude purchases from other insurers.

Information Asymmetry and Risk Transfer Markets, (with Eric Stephens), October 2017. Journal of Financial Intermediation
- Information revelation can be supported in equilibrium without any intervention; however transaction taxes and centralized clearing can be pareto improving.
Variable Pay: Is It For The Worker Or The Firm? (with Jason Allen), July 2019. Accepted, Journal of Corporate Finance
- Theoretical and empirical analysis with novel dataset on how variable pay can arise without any problem related to the worker when a firm's capital structure choice is considered.

Working Papers

Who Participates in Risk Transfer Markets? The Role of Transaction Costs and Counterparty Risk, (with Eric Stephens).
- Theoretical analysis of how transaction costs affect who participates in risk transfer markets in multiple informational environments.

Credit Risk Transfer: To Sell or to Insure.
- When a bank can choose between dispersing risk by credit derivatives or direct sales, what influences their choice when both are affected by asymmetric information?

Teaching

University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School, Department of Finance

FNCE 726 - Advanced Corporate Finance (MBA), 2012

University of Waterloo, Computing and Financial Management Program

CFM 101 - Introduction to Financial Markets and Data Analytics, 2021-2023

University of Waterloo, School of Accounting and Finance

AFM 271 - Managerial Finance, 2008-2011
AFM 272 - Mathematical Corporate Finance, 2009-2011
AFM 274 - Managerial Finance II, 2013, 2015-2017
AFM 372 - Mathematical Corporate Finance II, 2016-2017
AFM 373 - Cases in Corporate Finance, 2018-2020, 2022
AFM 476 - Advanced Corporate Finance, 2019-2020, 2022

University of Waterloo, Department of Statistics and Actuarial Science

ACTSC 471 - Corporate Finance for Acturial Science, 2019

Queen's University, Department of Economics

Econ 255 - Mathematics for Economics, 2006

Media

2023 Banking Crisis

Covid-19: Investing and Retirement

Offshore Banking and Trusts

Auto Insurance costs in Ontario:

Canadian Banks and the Financial Crisis

AM 570 News - multiple news segments in 2008, 2009

Research / Group Affiliations

For Fun...

In my free time I enjoy playing badminton, hockey, and soccer. I've been a coach for the latter two for 3-13 year olds. Here is some of the action on past teams: 2017/2018, 2018/2019, 2019/2020.