Amy W. Huber

Amy W. Huber
  • Assistant Professor of Finance

Contact Information

  • office Address:

    2320 Steinberg-Dietrich Hall
    3620 Locust Walk
    Philadelphia, PA 19104

Research Interests: Financial intermediation. Asset pricing. International finance. Macro-finance.

Links: CV, Personal Website

Overview

Amy W. Huber is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research examines how financial intermediation shapes asset market outcomes. She develops new frameworks and empirical measures to understand how the incentives and risk-bearing capacity of banks, FX dealers, private equity firms, and institutional investors influence asset prices and transmit shocks across markets.

Professor Huber holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and an A.B. in Economics, magna cum laude, from Harvard College. Prior to joining academia, she worked as a consultant with McKinsey & Company in New York and as a private equity investor at the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority. She is also a CFA charterholder.

For the most up-to-date list of publications, working papers, and research activities, please visit her personal website.

Continue Reading

Research

  • Amy Huber, Stefan Huber, Jinqing Shan, Christina Zhu (Working), Buying from the Family: Private Equity-Owned Insurers and Their Affiliated Investments. Abstract

    Insurers are increasingly owned by financial conglomerates that also own credit originators. This structure places large pools of policyholder-backed capital within the same organization as credit businesses that require funding. We study how this integration shapes insurer investment using novel data linking ownership structures to insurers’ holdings, transactions, and regulatory stress tests. Insurers owned by private equity (PE) firms allocate over 40% of their new investments to structured securities, more than 60% of which are issued by affiliated entities owned by the same PE firm. When investing with affiliates, PE-owned insurers purchase harder-to-value securities and pay higher prices for the same security. Moreover, they provide more persistent capital to affiliated issuers, impairing and selling underwater investments less frequently. PE-owned insurers’ affiliated investments do not subsequently perform better: they have lower fair values within two years of purchase and substantially greater downside risk in regulatory stress tests. We estimate that, under a 2008 financial crisis scenario, this additional risk would reduce insurer capital by 4 percentage points beyond the baseline stress loss. Overall, our findings show that integrating capital supply and demand within the same organization has implications for policyholders and financial stability.

Teaching

Past Courses

  • FNCE7070 - Valuation

    The focus of this course is on the valuation of companies. The course covers current conceptual and theoretical valuation frameworks and translates those frameworks into practical approaches for valuing companies. The relevant accounting topics and the appropriate finance theory are integrated to show how to implement the valuation frameworks discussed on a step-by-step basis. The course teaches how to develop the required information for valuing companies from financial statements and other information sources in a real-world setting. Topics covered in depth include discounted cash flow techniques and price multiples. In addition, the course covers other valuation techniques such as leveraged buyout analysis.

  • FNCE9330 - International Finance

    To provide an understanding of selected topics of current academic research in the areas of international finance and its intersection with international macroeconomics; to teach interested students the tools for conducting research in this field. Each topic will be developed beginning with early classic papers and then updated through the current status of the profession. The typical target audience comprises students in their second year or later. Prerequisite: Completion of first year course requirements

In the News

Knowledge @ Wharton

Activity

Latest Research

Amy Huber, Stefan Huber, Jinqing Shan, Christina Zhu (Working), Buying from the Family: Private Equity-Owned Insurers and Their Affiliated Investments.
All Research

In the News

The Business of Signing a Superstar Athlete

Kenneth Shropshire, professor emeritus of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School, explores the expectations, business opportunities, and community impact that come with signing a superstar athlete like LeBron James.…Read More

Knowledge @ Wharton - 2026/10/16
All News