Interview with

Columbia Economics MA Newsletter Spring 2026

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Tri Vi Dang is a Senior Lecturer in the Economics Department where he teaches undergraduate courses in Corporate Finance, Money and Banking, and Private Equity and Hedge Fund Investing. His main research interest is financial contracting and financial intermediation. Tri Vi has advised more than 40 Master students on their capstone projects.

Where are you from?

I was born in Saigon, Vietnam. My parents are Chinese. We left Vietnam by a small ship and moved to Germany when I was very young. I grew up and did my whole school education including college and PhD in Germany. With this educational background, it is basically impossible to get an academic job at a top US institution, unless you are a superstar, which I was not. I was at most a slightly above average student in terms of school grades. Because of that, I stayed and worked as Habilitand (Assistant Professor) at the University of Mannheim after obtaining my PhD in Economics from there.

What brought you to Columbia?

Both as a PhD student and Assistant Professor at the University of Mannheim, I attended many economics seminars and signed up for meetings with seminar speakers from all around the world so as to learn about the state-of-the-art research. One of the speakers was Dirk Bergemann from Yale University who is also German. He was interested in my research on information acquisition. A year later, I emailed Dirk to inquire about the opportunity to visit Yale. He was very generous and invited me to visit the Economics Department at Yale in September 2008. This opened the door to a range of fascinating opportunities. Instead of the planned one-year visit, I stayed there for two years.

Equipped with working experiences at Yale, I emailed the then Economics Department Chair Mike Riordan about the opportunity to work at Columbia in NYC. He invited me to come to his office in IAB for an interview. After a short conversation, he offered me a position to teach Corporate Finance and a new Private Equity senior seminar course for Columbia College students. I guess that Bentley McLeod whom I met at a seminar talk at Mannheim was supportive in the background. Also, the Department just needed someone to teach Finance classes for the brand-new Financial Economics major. I was very lucky and could work at Yale and join Columbia in 2010 through an unconventional path.

What do you enjoy about academic research?

Economic research starts with thinking about things you are passionate about and then implement, communicate and sell your ideas using the language and tools of Economics. It can be an extremely creative process where you do not only have intense discussions with your coauthors but also with the abstract model. During this process a theoretical model can literally speak to and teach us fascinating insights about tradeoffs, incentives and strategies. A thing that looked confusing before becomes easy to understand. You need to be lucky to team up with the right people to be part of such a unique process.

After I arrived at Yale, the investment bank Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy in September 2008. Around the same time Gary Gorton from Wharton just joined Yale School of Management. Gary is a leading expert on banking and financial crises. I emailed him if we could chat. Directly after our first meeting, we implicitly agreed to work on a joint project to analyze and make sense of the unfolding events in the financial system. A few weeks later, Bengt Holmstrom from MIT joined the project.

Working with two leading economists on a very relevant and timely topic was extremely interesting and constituted an intense and truly creative process. There were weeks where I met with Gary in his office and for lunch almost every day to discuss about mathematical calculations, how to revise the model (for 100+ times) and prove propositions. We were very passionate about trying to understand and formulate a new hypothesis, explanation, micro-foundation and theory of debt funding markets. The project became a research agenda. I think our Information Sensitivity Theory of Debt-on-Debt and Financial Crises has impact in the academic profession and provides useful insights for central bankers and financial regulators.

The collaboration with Gary was a transformative experience in terms of work. It has shaped the way how I think about economics and finance and do academic research. Meaningful applied theory is based on a deep understanding of history, institutional structures and data. I was very lucky to have the opportunity to work with and learn from very smart people with exceptional knowledge and high integrity.

What do you enjoy about teaching and advising students?

I teach three undergraduate courses, namely Corporate Finance, Money and Banking, and Private Equity and Hedge Fund Investing. Columbia students are very smart, creative and entrepreneurial. Two students I have been closely working with were named the Valedictorian of their graduating classes. It is a lot of fun and inspiring to work with young people with idealistic views. In addition, I have been advising more than 40 Economics Master students on their capstone projects. Despite the pressure to find a job or apply for admission to a PhD program, many of them were highly motivated and enthusiastic about conducting their master projects. We had many interesting conversations about economics and beyond.

Providing an inspiring and practically relevant educational experience which enables students to be competitive in the job markets is a very meaningful thing to do. Even after graduation, I have been keeping in touch with several of my former students. It is very nice to follow their careers and hear about their individual success stories.

Before you started your PhD studies, you worked in the financial industry. What did you do?

While I was writing my six-month diploma thesis in the night to finish my college degree at the University of Frankfurt, I had two daytime jobs. I worked for three days a week in the Primary Market Group of Deutsche Boerse to create a MS Access database of stock listings on the new market segment Neuer Markt. During the other two days of the week, I was working in the Foreign Exchange (FX) Trading Division at Deutsche Bank to update the FX pricing tools from individual European currencies to Euro. It was interesting and insightful sitting next to the trading guys and learn about the team and work culture.

After the transition to Euro in January 1999 and my pricing job was done, I had a conversation with my boss Steffen Orben, who was the star trader at Deutsche Bank, about my interest to gain some experiences in investment banking. The other traders on the trading desk later told me that Steffen called someone at the Investment Banking Division (IBD) and highly recommended me for a position there. I was very lucky to get into IBD without an application and with only two short interviews. Also, because the Equity Capital Markets group was small at that time, I was involved in the full process of an initial public offering (IPO) from pitching, management meetings, bookbuilding, pricing, share assignment to stock listing which is very unusual for a financial analyst. It was extremely interesting to learn about the incentive structures of clients, bankers and investors and especially during the dot.com stock market bubble.

What are the main differences between working in academia and the financial industry?

Trading requires a specific speculative mentality and a sharp instinct for short-term market movements. Performance and reward are measured on a monthly, weekly or even daily basis. This is one main difference from academic work which is typically a longer-term process. Academic work is more like venture capital investment.

Investment banking in some sense is more similar to academic work. Financial advisers sell financial services. A goal of academic research is to publish an influential paper in a top journal which is like an IPO process. The S-1 filing, roadshows and bookbuilding are like seminar presentations to promote your work and obtain comments to improve the paper while publication is like stock market listing.

Yet there is a fundamental difference. Investment bankers typically work on a deal with a few months duration and then move on to the next deal. The impact of financial advisory is to provide value-added solutions to clients. The impact of academic research is in some sense broader and to provide new insights on and a better understanding of a specific topic. Some academic ideas can take very long to be materialized. A new theory might be so novel and unconventional or even radical to many people initially such that its impact and significance are realized much later, but then it can shape and change the view of many people on a thing.

What do you enjoy about being in NYC? Any special things you recommend to explore in the city?

In addition to offering an excellent education, Columbia is located in a cosmopolitan world-city and the center of global finance. People here are very dynamic and extremely competitive. NYC is a global trend setter and a culinary and cultural hotspot. In terms of culture, the Metropolitan Opera offers a very interesting fusion of bel canto and fancy high-tech stage acting. Like many things in NYC, even the highest level of singing by the world-famous sopranos and tenors is performed as a glamorous show. By the way, students can get Met tickets for great seats at 70% discount. A secret tip is The Frick Collection. This museum nearby Central Park offers a relaxing space to enjoy European Old Masters artworks.

What advices do you have for current and prospectus Master students?

Geopolitics and especially AI will change the dynamics of every single job market in an unprecedented way. Like other institutions, universities will have to innovate and provide AI-adapted educational offerings in this new era. Many of the Master students are international students and they are particularly affected in this environment.

I have this small piece of comment. Education is a continuous learning process. It provides skills, perspectives and experiences rather than just a degree and certificate. Studying at Columbia means having the unique opportunity to meet with very talented classmates and dedicated teachers on an intellectually stimulating campus in a cosmopolitan city full of interesting people. A single lecture, conversation or meeting can be a transformative experience and even open up the door to new fascinating opportunities.

This is an extended version of the interview with Columbia Economics MA Newsletter conducted in April 2026.