Meet a SLU Researcher: Marc Painter, Ph.D.

09/28/2021

Marc Painter, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of finance at Saint Louis University. Painter discusses his research that uses innovative data sources to see finance trends in a different way.

Background

"I actually worked as a portfolio analyst," Painter said. "In industry, it's more fast-paced, but you don't get to stop and think about one question, which is what you get to do in academia."

Research Focus

"I have a wide range of research projects that I do, trying to use more innovative sources of data than have traditionally been used to look at just more open questions in finance, and even economics more generally," he said. "For example, using satellite imagery of parking lots of firms, what can that tell us?

"Every quarter a Wal-Mart or a Target needs to tell their investors how they're doing. But if these sophisticated investors know beforehand, because they see the cars in the parking lots, they can trade on it before everybody else knows.

"An individual investor is not going to have access to that, so what are the welfare implications of that? A more precise way to think about how one city is doing, not just the firms in that city, but how are we getting jobs.

"As it becomes more prevalent and less expensive, then we can have more access to it for everyone and it'll kind of help have a more level playing field."

Life at SLU

"Here at SLU, I already had high expectations and they've all been met or surpassed," Painter said. "Doing a brown bag of an early stage idea, you're not only going to get my finance colleagues to show up, but, you know, different members of the business school who are going to bring different perspectives, and they're happy to give their time to give their time to listen to me talk about boring finance stuff and actually give me good feedback.

"That's been a big help here that I don't think you'll get everywhere."

This is part of a weekly series of short videos featuring faculty researchers from across the University sharing the important and cutting-edge research taking place at SLU.

Meet the Researcher Video Series