Celine Yue FEI
Welcome! I am currently a postdoc at Kenan-Flagler Business School of UNC at Chapel Hill. I obtained my Ph.D. in Finance from Toulouse School of Economics.
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Research Areas
  • Venture Capital
  • Private Equity
  • ​Fintech
  • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)

Google Scholar; UNC Official Page​

Contact Information:
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Kenan-Flagler Business School
Chapel Hill, NC, 27599
​Email: Celine_Fei@kenan-flagler.unc.edu
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Submitted Research Papers
1. What Drives Racial Minorities to Use Fintech Lending? invited submission, R&R
  • Presented at: ​2021 NBER Entrepreneurship Working Group, 2022 OCC Research Symposium on Financial Technology, 2022 CEAR-CenFIS Conference on Financial Innovation (Atlanta Fed & GSU), 2022 Global AI Finance Research Conference (NUS & SKKU),  2023 MidWestFA, 2023 EasternFA, 2023 OFR Rising Scholar Conference (scheduled), 2023 BFWG Conference (scheduled), 2023 Finance and Accounting (F&A) Annual Research Symposium (scheduled), 2023 Economics of Financial Technology Conference (scheduled), American University, Clemson University, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH), University of Alberta, University of Calgary, University of Waterloo​
​ ​Abstract: Using a national sample of Paycheck Protection Program restaurants, I find evidence of a more negative minority-non-minority rating gap for fintech lenders, which suggests taste-based discrimination of Becker (1957). To quantify various channels' magnitude, I estimate an empirical matching model where I find that fintech-minority matches generate more value than other matches. Moreover, this fintech-minority additional value channel is the most important channel in explaining racial disparities in fintech usage. Disabling this channel reduces minority borrowers' usage of fintech by approximately 70%. Disabling lending relationships and bank branch channels only reduces minority borrowers' usage of fintech by less than 2%.
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2. Portfolio Management in Private Equity, with Gregory W. Brown and David Robinson 
  • Presented at: 2023 AFA, 2023 Columbia Private Equity Conference (*), 2023 Mitsui Finance Symposium (Michigan Ross, scheduled), 2023 Lapland Investment Fund Summit​  (Aalto)​, 2023 FIRS (scheduled), 2023 SKEMA Corporate Restructuring Conference (scheduled), ​2022 Finance, Organizations and Markets Conference (USC Marshall), 2022 WashU St. Louis Annual Conference on Corporate Finance (*), 2022 UNC Annual Private Equity Research Consortium ​(*), 2022 Conference on Financial Economics and Accounting​​ (GSU), 2022 Society of Quantitative Analysts conference (*), 2021 IPC Research Symposium (*), Tulane (*), St. Gallen
  • ​Matlab Code
Abstract: General Partners (GPs) in private equity face a trade-off between focusing their skills and effort on fewer investments to earn higher returns, or investing more broadly to reduce risk through diversification. Using a novel, deal-level dataset of 5,925 global investments from 1999 to 2016, we show that these portfolio considerations are important for understanding fund-level private equity returns. The largest investments in PE funds typically have the lowest returns on average, but are also the least risky. Returns and risk are both increasing in industry or geographic concentration. And while GP skill only accounts for 4%-6% of the total return variation of a typical investment, it accounts for more than 40% of the return variation at the fund level. These findings show that GPs use portfolio construction, and not just deal selection, to seek risk-adjusted fund-level returns.
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3. Can Government Foster the Development of Venture Capital? R&R
Selected Work in Progress
Too Political to Fail: Restructuring Through Private Equity, with Ulrich Hege and Josh Lerner

Journal Referees
Management Science, ​Review of Financial Studies

​Teaching

UNC Kenan-Flagler (Lecturer): Corporate Finance BUSI408; evaluation 4.7/5
​Toulouse School of Management: Corporate Finance (Master); evaluation 3.6/4
Toulouse School of Economics (TA): Macroeconomics PhD Core, Macroeconomics, Econometrics
​Discussion [Link]