Marius Guenzel

Marius Guenzel
  • Assistant Professor of Finance

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    2455 Steinberg-Dietrich Hall
    3620 Locust Walk
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Research Interests: corporate finance, behavioral finance, organizational economics, labor economics, behavioral economics

Links: CV, Personal Website

Research

  • Francesca Bastianello, Paul Decaire, Marius Guenzel, Valuation Models.

  • Pranav Garg, Marius Guenzel, Shimon Kogan, Marina Niessner, Kelly Shue, Facing Default?.

  • Francesca Bastianello, Paul Decaire, Marius Guenzel, Mental Models and Financial Forecasts (The Quarterly Journal of Economics, reject and submit).

  • Marius Guenzel, Shimon Kogan, Marina Niessner, Kelly Shue, AI Personality Extraction from Faces: Labor Market Implications.

  • Marius Guenzel, Ulrike Malmendier, Denis Sosyura, Longevity and Occupational Choice.

  • Paul Decaire and Marius Guenzel, What Drives Very Long-Run Cash Flow Growth Expectations?.

  • Marius Guenzel and Tong Liu, Excess Commitment in R&D (The Review of Financial Studies, accepted).

  • Marius Guenzel, Clint Hamilton, Ulrike Malmendier, Prosociality and Layoffs.

  • Marius Guenzel (2020), In Too Deep: The Effect of Sunk Costs on Corporate Investment, The Journal of Finance, June 2025, Vol 80 (3), pp. 1593-1646.

    Abstract: Sunk costs are unrecoverable costs that should not affect decision-making. I provide evidence that firms systematically fail to ignore sunk costs and that this leads to significant investment distortions. In fixed-exchange-ratio stock mergers, aggregate market fluctuations after parties enter into a binding merger agreement induce plausibly exogenous variation in the final acquisition cost. These quasi-random cost shocks strongly predict firms’ commitment to an acquired business following deal completion, with an interquartile cost increase reducing subsequent divestiture rates by 8% to 9%. Consistent with an intrapersonal sunk cost channel, distortions are concentrated in firm-years in which the acquiring CEO is still in office.

  • Mark Borgschulte, Marius Guenzel, Canyao Liu, Ulrike Malmendier (2020), CEO Stress, Aging, and Death, The Journal of Finance, December 2025, Vol 80 (6), pp. 3401-3442.

    Abstract: We assess the long-term effects of managerial stress on aging and mortality. Using a difference-in-differences design, we apply neural network–based machine-learning techniques to CEOs’ facial images and show that exposure to industry distress shocks during the Great Recession produces visible signs of aging. We estimate a one-year increase in “apparent” age. Moreover, using data on CEOs since the mid-1970s, we estimate a 1.1-year decrease in life expectancy after an industry distress shock, but a two-year increase when antitakeover laws insulate CEOs from market discipline. The estimated health costs are significant, both in absolute terms and relative to other health risks.

Teaching

Current Courses (Spring 2026)

  • FNCE2390 - Behavioral Finance

    This course combines insights from behavioral economics and psychology to shed light on anomalous decisions by investors and possibly behavior of asset prices. Its content is designed to both complement and challenge the "rational" investment paradigms developed in the early finance classes. It introduces students to much modern theoretical and empirical research showing this paradigm to be insufficient to describe various features of actual financial markets. The course structure involves early lectures, several cases, and a final project involving "real life" examples and some modern research methods. In the capstone project students research and explore a specific behavioral bias or a profitable investment opportunity. Students will work in groups to simulate the behavior of, say: a portfolio management team looking for a new trading strategy; a consulting firm advising corporations on issues of financial management; or an entrepreneurial start-up developing a retail financial product. The main deliverable is in a form of a "pitch" to potential clients to be delivered both in the form of a group presentation in class and a formal write-up to be submitted by the due date.

    FNCE2390001 ( Syllabus )

  • FNCE7390 - Behavioral Finance

    There is an abundance of evidence suggesting that the standard economic paradigm - rational agents in an efficient market - does not adequately describe behavior in financial markets. In this course, we will survey the evidence and use psychology to guide alternative theories of financial markets. Along the way, we will address the standard argument that smart, profit-seeing agents can correct any distortions caused by irrational investors. Further, we will examine more closely the preferences and trading decisions of individual investors. We will argue that their systematic biases can aggregate into observed market inefficiencies, thus giving rise to apparently profitable trading strategies. The latter part of the course extends the analysis to corporate decision making. We then explore the evidence for both views in the context of capital structure, investment, dividend, and merger decisions. In addition to prerequisites, FNCE 7050 is highly recommended but not required.

    FNCE7390001 ( Syllabus )

  • FNCE9260 - Empirical Meth Corp Fn

    The course will cover a variety of micro-econometric models and methods including panel data models, program evaluation methods e.g. difference in differences, matching techniques, regression discontinuity design, instrumental variables, duration models, structural estimation, simulated methods of moments. The structure of the course consists of lectures, student presentations, and empirical exercises. Published studies will be utilized in a variety of fields such as corporate finance, labor economics, and industrial organization to illustrate the various techniques. The goal of the course is to provide students with a working knowledge of various econometric techniques that they can apply in their own research. As such, the emphasis of the course is on applications, not theory. Students are required to have taken a graduate sequence in Econometrics, you should be comfortable with econometrics at the level of William Green's "Econometric Analysis of Cross-Section and Panel Data".

    FNCE9260001 ( Syllabus )

In the News

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Francesca Bastianello, Paul Decaire, Marius Guenzel, Valuation Models.
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Knowledge at Wharton - 11/17/2025
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