Ivan Lavrov
Welcome to my website.
I am an applied economist with interest in Financial Economics. I earned a PhD in Economics from UCLA in June 2025, and as of November 2025 I seek a position in industry. I am available for interviews and immediate hire in the US.
Contact me at ilavrov113@gmail.com or LinkedIn.
My Research
The Scarring Effect of Financial Distress: Evidence from Chapter 11 Reorganizations
job market paper
Abstract Firms defaulting on their debt often do not go out of business. Instead, many of them reorganize through a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Are their borrowing costs commensurate with their post-reorganization financial health? I answer this question by assembling a panel of 207 bonds from post-reorganization issuers and show that surviving a bankruptcy has a scarring effect on firms. Measuring financial health with credit ratings and borrowing costs with credit spreads, I document that in their first post-emergence year financially sound firms experience higher borrowing costs than comparable never-bankrupt firms, whereas vulnerable firms enjoy lower costs. My findings suggest that the post-reorganization bond market may be inefficient in distinguishing financially sound issuers and rewarding them with favorable borrowing costs, making it difficult to rebuild the reputation of solid debtors.
Trade Dissemination Policy, Public Registration of 144A Bonds, and Transaction Costs
draft coming soon
Abstract This paper studies the impact of transparency reforms in corporate bond markets on the transaction costs of executing secondary market trades. I exploit public registrations of previously private Rule 144A bonds and the 2014 expansion of TRACE public dissemination policy to include Rule 144A trades as a quasi-experiment. Using the Difference-in-Differences strategy and transaction-level price data, I isolate the effect of publicly disseminating trades on transaction costs faced by bond investors. I show that registration reduced transaction costs prior to 2014, but not afterward, when dissemination started to apply to both private and public bonds. This finding points to transparency as the key driver of post-registration transaction cost improvement, with stronger effects for infrequently traded bonds and large trades. Quantitatively, I estimate that trade dissemination reduced transaction costs by 19% relative to their pre-registration level. Using dealer-level data, I further show that transaction cost reductions are driven by pricing adjustments among incumbent dealers rather than dealer entry and exit following a registration event.