James Traina

James Traina is a senior research scientist at the New York University Stern School of Business and an assistant professor of finance at NYU Stern Abu Dhabi.

His research focuses on productivity, industrial organization, and corporate finance. He studies how competition and technology shape firm behavior, with particular emphasis on investment, pricing, and financing decisions. This includes work on the divergence between profit rates and financial market valuations, highlighting differences between public- and private-firm performance.

He previously served as a research economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.

He holds a Ph.D. in financial economics from the University of Chicago. He also earned two bachelor’s degrees from the University of Pennsylvania.