Christine Parlour (UC Berkeley): Liquid Staking

Please join us for a seminar of the Advanced Financial Technologies Laboratory (AFTLab):

Time: Thursday, January 22, 2026, 5:00pm-6:00pm

Location: Huang 305

Speaker: Christine A. Parlour (UC Berkeley)

Title: Liquid Staking

Abstract: Liquid staking allows agents to sell ownership of an illiquid claim to satisfy a liquidity need. We develop a model of liquid staking and characterize the effect of the secondary market on protocol stability. We establish that the liquid market has two effects: first, it allows agents to redeem illiquid assets and thus reduces run risk on the protocol, but also conveys information and can act as a coordination mechanism and increase market run risk. Using novel data on the Lido protocol, we present stylized facts on the staking market and relate our results to the design of digital deposits.

Bio: Christine A. Parlour is the Sylvan C. Coleman Chair of Finance and Accounting at Berkeley Haas. Her research focuses on market microstructure, limit order markets, cryptocurrencies, FinTech, and payment systems. She is the former president of the Western Finance Association and a former member of the Nasdaq Economic Advisory Board. She has also served as visiting economist at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). She is currently on the steering committee for the New Special Study of Securities Markets. For more than twenty years, Professor Parlour has researched issues related to the economics of financial exchanges. She specializes in financial markets, including equity markets, debt markets, and cryptocurrencies. In equity markets, she has examined price dynamics, competition for order flow, payment for order flow, and informed trading. Her research on cryptocurrencies addresses the effect of Central Bank Digital Currency on banking system stability, the costs of settlement on the Bitcoin Ledger, and how initial coin offerings (ICOs) differ from traditional funding. Widely published, Professor Parlour’s award-winning research has appeared in leading finance and economics journals, including the American Economic Review, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Finance, and the Journal of Financial Economics. She is an editor at the Review of Finance; associate editor of the Journal of Financial Markets, the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and the Journal of Financial Services Research; and a former associate editor of Management Science and the Journal of Finance. Professor Parlour has taught courses in investment analysis, FinTech, auctions and microstructure, and capital markets. She is a winner of the Haas School’s Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching. She has held visiting academic appointments at INSEAD, the London School of Economics and Politics, and Paris Dauphine University. Professor Parlour is a past president of the Finance Theory Group. She received her PhD in Economics from the Queen's University at Kingston.