Research

Research Interests

Information Economics, Fintech, Entrepreneurial Finance

Publications

Informed Trading and Intertemporal Substitution (SSRN) 

Milgrom and Stokey (1982) do not hold in many reasonable scenarios when agents consume in multiple periods.

 -Journal of Finance, Vol 75:2 (2020): 1135-1156.

 -International Conference on Game Theory, SFS Cavalcade, FIRS, WFA, Cubist Systematic Strategies/ Ph.D. Candidate Awards for Outstanding Research (WFA)

-Erratum for Lemma 1 Proof. Thank Percy(Xuhui) Chen at UBC for pointing this out!

Persistent Blessings of Luck (With Lin Will Cong) (SSRN)

One period of luck has an enduring impact on VC fund performance and compensation for homogeneous managers, and investors benefit from working with multiple funds with tiered contracts.

-Review of Financial Studies, Vol 35:3 (2022): 1183-1221.

-NBER Corporate Finance, Adam Smith Workshop, EFA, Chicago Booth, Rochester Simon School, ABFER, CICF, 6th Luxembourg Asset Management Summit, Northeastern Finance Conference, Midwest Finance Association Meeting, Frontiers of Finance, SFM Conference, IRMC, CUHK Shenzhen, Chinese Academy of Sciences, AsianFA, EFMA, SAIF

Information Cascades and Threshold Implementation  (With Lin Will Cong) (SSRN)

All-or-nothing rule in crowdfunding excludes DOWN-cascades. Financing feasibility and efficiency, as well as information production all improved relative to standard information cascade settings.

-Journal of Finance, Vol 79:1 (2024): 579-629.

-Yihong Xia Best Paper Award

-Stanford SITE Summer Workshop, Adam Smith Workshop, WFA, AFA, AEA, SFS Cavalcade, EFA, FIRS,  Cavalcade Asia, UBC Summer Conference, University of Washington, European Winter Finance Summit, Minnesota Junior Finance Conference, CICF, Summer Institute of Finance (SAIF), Midwest Finance Association Meeting, Minnesota-Chicago Accounting Theory Conference, 1st World Symposium on Investment Research, Chicago Financial Institutions Conference, FIRN Sydney Market Microstructure Meeting, Bergen FinTech Conference, RSFAS Summer Camp, UIC, CUNY Baruch, Emerging Trends in Entrepreneurial Finance Conference, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance Conference

Comments on: Mediation and Strategic Delay in Bargaining and Markets (Non peer-reviewed) Sciencedirect

-Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Vol 141 (2022)

Working Papers

Firm Dynamics and the Return to Entrepreneurship (SSRN)

The return to entrepreneurship interacts with firm growth decisions. The dollar return is lower when additional assets can effectively relieve financing constraints and the entrepreneur values dollar return more than its face value. Firms may optimally choose to remain small despite their ability to grow through cash flow reinvestments. Relaxing financing constraints may have a non-monotonic effect on firm dollar returns.

 -World Congress of the Econometric Society, Asian Meeting of the Econometric Society, AsianFA Conference

With a Little Help from Friends: Strategic Financing and the Crowd (With Sudipto Dasgupta, Tingting Fan, and Yiwei Li)  (SSRN)

Financing from connected people might be a signal of performance manipulation. Sophisticated investors are aware of potential manipulation while naïve investors herd. 

 -ABFER, Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance Conference, Asia-Pacific Corporate Finance Workshop, Australian National University, CKGSB, PBC Tsinghua, Renmin University of China, University of Sydney

Market Integration, Risk-Taking, and Income Inequality (With Lin Will Cong, and Ron Kaniel)  (SSRN)

In a decentralized, segmented environment, entrepreneurship and risk-taking are inefficiently low; in an integrated market, they can be socially excessive and entrepreneurship is non-monotone in the service supply. As transportation and information technologies improve, occupational risk-taking and total production increase, with ambiguous welfare consequences.

 -SFS Cavalcade, CSEF-RCFS Conference on Finance, Labor, and Inequality, Summer Institute of Finance (SAIF), CFRI & CIRF, APAD, HKUST, SWUFE, CUFE

Designing Index Provision (With Yan Xiong) 

Index providers emerge as a third party to address the conflict of interest between retail investors and passive funds. Contrary to common wisdom that retail investors benefit from more competition, we demonstrate that they prefer a concentrated index provision market, wherein the designed index aligns closely with the risk exposure desired by the retail investors. Consequently, a few index providers wiled strong market power over passive funds and charge high markups, which may seem puzzling given the relative ease of creating and maintaining an index.

 -Finance Theory Group Meeting 

Book Chapters

Categories and Functions of Crypto-Tokens (With Lin Will Cong) (Link)

An article prepared for the Palgrave Handbook of FinTech and Blockchain.

A Brief Introduction to Blockchain Economics (With Long Chen, Lin Will Cong) (SSRN)

An article prepared for a book chapter. We highlight unifying concepts, irreducible tradeoffs, major issues, and future directions concerning blockchains and their applications.