Research

Research Interests

Corporate Governance, Corporate Finance, Institutional Investors, Corporate Investment/Innovation

Current Research Topics

Proxy Voting, Institutional Investors Activism, Technological Innovation, Boards of Directors, M&A

Working Papers (Scheduled future meetings/semninars are highlighted in red!)

“Do Independent Expert Directors Matter?” with Ronald Masulis (UNSW), Christian Ruzzier (Universidad de San Andres), and Sheng Xiao (Westminster) - presented at UTS, UNSW, and Delaware Corporate Governance Symposium

--Featured in "A Study Links Expert Directors to Value", a report in Agenda, a Financial Times Publication on December 3, 2012.

“Ownership Structure and Firm Innovation” with Chen Lin (HKU) and Sheng Xiao (Westminster)

“Shareholder Rights and Tunneling: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment” with Jun Qian (Fudan)

Publications

"Internalizing Governance Externalities: The Role of Institutional Cross-ownership" with Jie (Jack) He (U Georgia) and Jiekun Huang (UIUC) Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 134, Issue 2, November 2019 pp. 400-418

- presented at WFA 2017, EFA 2018 (Warsaw), CICF 2017, Toulouse, WUSTL Annual Conference on Corporate Finance,...

-Featured in BloombergView, Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog

“Firm-specific knowledge assets and employment arrangements: Evidence from CEO compensation design and CEO dismissal” with Heli Wang (Singapore Management University) Guoli Chen (INSEAD) Strategic Management Journal Volume 38, Issue 9, September 2017

“Reputation Concerns of Independent Directors: Evidence from Individual Director Voting” (journal article version) with Wei Jiang (Columbia), Hualin Wan (Lixin) Review of Financial Studies, March 2016

- presented at AFA 2014, EFA 2012 (Copenhagen), LBS Summer Finance Symposium 2013, FIRS 2013,...

- Featured in Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation

“Increase in Takeover Protection and Firm Knowledge Accumulation Strategy” with Heli Wang (Singapore Management University) Jinyu He (HKUST) 2016 Strategic Management Journal

“CEO Duality and Firm Performance: Evidence from an Exogenous Shock to the Competitive Environment” with Tina Yang (Villanova) 2014, Journal of Banking and Finance

- presented at AsianFA 2011 meeting, FMA 2011, NFA 2013, SGF Conference 2013, Challenges of Corporate Governance (Bath)

Media Coverage: Benzinga Les Echos

“How Do Agency problems Affect Firm Value? Evidence from China” (published version)with Sheng Xiao (Westminster) the European Journal of Finance 20, 803-828, 2014 presented at CICF 2009

“A Cross-Country Study of Financial Development, Government Ownership of Banks, and Firm Innovation” with Sheng Xiao (Westminster) Journal of International Money and Finance, 2012, Vol. 31, pp. 880-906

- presented at CICF 2011, 3rd EMG conference (London, May 2011)

“When Bank Loans are Bad News: Market Reaction to Loan Announcements under the Risk of Expropriation” (with Weihua Huang, Maastricht University, and Armin Schwienbacher, SKEMA) 2012 Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions & Money

-presented at FMA 2008, AFFI 2007 - accepted by CICF 2008

Work in Progress:

"Mutual Fund Risk Taking" 2020 with Stephen Sun and Yuehua Tang

Old Working Papers (on Theoretical Contract Theory)

“Policy Persistence in a Repeated Common Agency Game”, 2008

presented at 2008 North American Winter Meeting of the Econometric Society

“The Irrelevance of Transparency: Information Control in Consultation under Career Concerns”, 2008

Selected Publications in Chinese

“Top Management Turnover in China Listed Companies: An Empirical Analysis” Reform Issue 6, Nov 2001, 29-34 (in Chinese)

(Reform was ranked 2nd among all economics and finance journal by CSSIC impact factor in 2001)

“Top Management Turnover in China Listed Companies: An Empirical Analysis”

Master Thesis, 2002, Sichuan University (in Chinese)

(To evaluate the efficiency of internal corporate governance of China listed firms, this thesis examines the empirical relationship between top executive turnover and firm performances and stock price reaction to top executive turnover.)

“Corporate diversification, firm performance and ownership structure", (with Sheng Xiao) Web journal of Chinese Management Review, 2003,Vol. 6, No. 4, pp.79-91. http://cmr.ba.ouhk.edu.hk/cmr/webjournal/cmrv6n4.htm (in Chinese)

Other Professional Activities

Ad-hoc Referee for:

Management Secience (1), The Rand Journal of Economics (3), Journal of Corporate Finance (2), Journal of Banking and Finance (3), Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, China Economic Review, China Economics Quarterly (2), Europen Journal of Finance, Frontiers of Economics in China (3)

Conference Organizer:

First French Workshop on Corporate Governance (Lyon, France)

My citations by Google scholar

http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=y4oD1uwAAAAJ

Why do we do research?

"Politics are for the present, an equation is for eternity" -- Albert Einstein

"…Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back." -- John Maynard Keynes

"The joy of discovery is certainly the liveliest that the mind of man can ever feel." -- Claude Bernard

"I think I understand why so many people think that economics is a boring subject, but they are wrong. On the contrary, there is hardly anything I know that is as exciting as finding that the great events that move history, the forces that determine the destiny of empires and the fate of kings, can sometimes be explained, predicted, or even controlled by a few symbols on a printed page. We all want power, we all want success, but the ultimate reward is the simple joy of understanding."-- Paul Krugman