Selected Working Papers

[1] "Buying Green or Being Seen? Social Image, Impact, and Beliefs in Rooftop Solar", with Rui Dai and Cong (Roman) Wang (Download)

• Republicans are less likely to install rooftop splar panels than Democrats, and the effect is mostly driven by social image concerns

[2] "Artificial Intelligence and the Racial Gap in Mortgage Lending," with Jing He, Leiju Qiu, and Daxuan Zhao (Download)

• Mortgage lenders adopting AI increases the racial gap in mortgage lending

• 2026 NFA (scheduled)

[3] "Non-Bank Competition and Regressive Mortgage Credit Redistribution", with David Zhang and Tim Zhang (Download)

• Banks shift away from small-dollar mortgage origination when facing greater non-bank compeition

[4] "Politically Coded: CEO Partisanship and Firm AI Adoption," with Alicia Li and Ruiyao Zhu (Download)

• Firms led by Republican CEOs hire more AI-related employees

[5] "Political Ideology and Durable Spending" with Francesco D'Acunto,  Janet Gao, Cong (Roman) Wang, and Yichen Wang (Download) 

[6] "Negative Peer Effects and Partisan Bias in Investment Decisions ," with Young Jae  Choi, Chih Ming Tan, and Ruiyao Zhu (Download).

[7] "Political Alignment and Housing Transactions", with Michael-Paul James and Roman Wang (Download) 

• Individuals affiliated with the same party as the sitting president are more likely to engage in housing transactions because they perceive lower uncertainty in the economy. Consequently, housing supply in neighborhoods with more aligned households increase and house prices in those neighborhoods decrease.

• Semifinalist for the Best Papaer Awards, FMA 2025.

[8] "Partisan Loan Officers and the Racial Gap in Mortgage Lending" (Download) (Audio)

• Democratic loan officers originate more loans to minority borrowers by lowering the lending standard based on hard information.

• 2025 Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making

• 2025 FIFI Conference

• 2026 ASSA/AREUEA

• 2026 MFA Annual Meeting

• 2026 NFA (scheduled)

[9] "The Cultural Origin of Household Debt", with Xinming Li (Download) 

• The ethnic origin of households affects how much leverage they use when buying houses.

[10] "Political Homphily and Director Appointments", with Ruiyao Zhu (Download) 

• Candidates sharing similar political views as the CEOs are more likely to be appointed to the board of directors.

[11] "Fintech and Gender Discrimination," with Chunxing Sun, Bohui Zhang, Daxuan Zhao (Download).

• AI algorithm increases price discrimination against female borrowers

• EFA 2023

• Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis

[12] "Does Hedge Fund Activism Harm the Environment?," with Leiju Qiu and Daxuan Zhao (Download)

• The emission of toxic chemicals decreases after a firm is targeted by hedge fund activism

• Featured on the institutionalinvestors.com.

[13] "Herding in Corporate Climate Risk Disclosure", with Alfred Z. Liu and Angela X. Liu (Download) 

[14] "Language Style Matching and CFO Turnover," with Angela Liu (Download)

• Language style matching between the CEO and the CFO can predict CFO turnover

• MFA 2022

[15] "Shareholder-Creditor Conflicts and Equity Lending," with Luca Lin, Pedro Saffi, and Jason Sturgess (Download)

• Revise and Resubmit, Management Science 

• Shareholder-creditor conflict affects institutional investors' incentives to lend out shares to short sellers.

• MFA 2022

[16] "Monetary Policy and Bank Concentration," with Tim Zhang (Download)

• Tightening monetary policy can increase bank concentration.

[17] "Banking Deregulation and Discrimination in Mortgage Lending," with Xiaonan (Flora) Ma  (Download)

• Interstate banking deregulation increases entering banks' discrimination against African American borrowers in mortgage origination.