I am primarily interested in studying economic implications of information frictions and uncertainty, with an eye towards evidence-based policymaking.  In particular, I study the role of information frictions in shaping (i) contracting design, (ii) financial market trading, and (iii) macroeconomic dynamics. 

Contracting under Information Frictions

• “Contractual Managerial Incentives with Stock Price Feedback,” with Qi Liu and TC Lin.  American Economic Review, 109: 2466-2468, 2019.

 A nontechnical summary here. AEIdeas coverage here.  Code here. Data reference list here. Compensation change data here.

• “Relative Wealth Concerns, Executive Compensation, and Systemic Risk Taking,” with Qi Liu.  Accepted at American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.

WSJ coverage here   

•  “Incentive Contracting Under Ambiguity Aversion,” with Qi Liu and Lei Lu. Economic Theory, 66:929-950. 2016 

• "Managerial Compensation under Privately-observed Hedging and Earnings Management," with Qi Liu. Economics Letters, 137: 1-4,  2015 (Lead article).

• “Executive Compensation and Earnings Management under Moral Hazard,” Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 41:276-290, 2014.

• “Risk Choices and Compensation Design,” with Mark Carey.

Real Effects of Uncertainty

• “Monetary Policy Uncertainty" with Lucas Husted and John Rogers.  Journal of Monetary Economics. 115: 20-36, 2020.

A nontechnical summary of the index construction here. A cross-country version here.        

Mentioned in the Wall Street Journal  here;  Brookings here;  Deutsche Bank Research here; 

                               Chicago Booth Review here; Two Sigma Investments here;  Cato Institute here;

                               Menzie Chinn's and James Hamilton's blog: EconBrowser here.

• “What is Certain about Uncertainty?" with Cisil Sarisoy, Juan M. Londono, John Rogers, Deepa Datta, Thiago Ferreira, Olesya Grishchenko, Mohammad R. Jahan-Parvar, Francesca Loria, Sai Ma, Marius Rodriguez and Ilknur Zer.  Journal of Economic Literature.

• "U.S.-China Tension" with John Rogers and Tony Sun.

•  "The Real Effect of Financial Reporting: A Quantitative Assessment,” with Pierre Liang and Xuan Tam. 

Financial Market Effects of Asymmetric Information

• "Lending Next to the Courthouse: Exposure to Adverse Events and Mortgage Lending Decision" with Da Huo, Mingzhu Tai, Yuhai Xuan, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Forthcoming

• “Anomaly Discovery and Arbitrage Trading,” with Hongjun Yan, Qi Liu, Xi Dong, Lei Lu.  Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 1:1-28, 2023.

           Coverage: QuantPedia here    ValueWalk  here 

• “Asset Returns Under Periodic Revelations of Earnings  Management,” International  Economic Review, 55: 255-282, 2014.

•  “Managerial Manipulation, Corporate Governance, and Limited Market Participation,” with Qi Liu. Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, 90:98-117, 2018.

•  "Uncertainty, Carry Trade Excess Returns, and Risk Reversals,” with Lucas Husted and John Rogers. Journal of International Money and Finance, 88:228-241, 2018.

• “Government Connections and Financial Constraints: Evidence from a Large Sample of Chinese Firms,” with Bob Cull, Wei Li, Colin Xu,  Journal of Corporate Finance, 2015.

• "Racial Disparities in Small Business Lending" with Chen Lin, Tao Chen and Camelia Minoiu.

•  "Informational Political Connections" with Qi Liu and Kang Chen.

• "Managerial Career Concerns and Informational Stock Price Feedback" with Huining Dong, Qi Liu and Zheng Zhang. 

• "Drivers of the Global Financial Cycles" with John Rogers and Wenbin Wu.

• Investor Sentiment, Managerial Manipulation, and Stock Returns, With Jiajun Jiang and Qi Liu.