Sherry Xue

Hi! Welcome to my personal site. I am a PhD student in Finance at the London School of Economics. I'll be on the job market 2023-2024. My research fields are innovation, empirical corporate finance and corporate venture capital. 


Contact: y.xue9@lse.ac.uk

Download CV [Link]

Working Papers

Returnee inventors and home country innovation (Job market paper) 

Presented at WEFI Student-led Workshop 2023, Imperial College Job Market Candidate Evening, and LSE PhD workshop

[Link to the latest draft]

Abstract: I analyze the innovations produced by Chinese companies and research organizations ("receivers") after hiring returnee inventors – Chinese inventors who returned from abroad. Following their return, receivers significantly increase patenting and the number of involved inventors in technological fields where the returnee has experience. However, the new patents receive fewer citations, especially from abroad. Additionally, there is a decreased proportion of patents involving foreign inventors, indicating that returnee inventors substitute for international collaboration. These findings continue to hold when the timing of the return is plausibly exogenous, and the effects are stronger when the returnee is from the United States. My results suggest that returnee inventors play a significant role in knowledge transfer to China while also reducing the flow of knowledge from China to other countries through reduced collaboration.



Work in progress

CEO Contract Horizon and Innovation (R&R Journal of Financial Economics), with Juanita Gonzalez-Uribe and Moqi Groen-Xu

The financial objective of Corporate Venture Capitalists: Evidence from the UK’s Corporate Venturing Scheme

Presented at WEFI Student-led Workshop 2022 and LSE PhD workshop

[Draft on request]

Abstract: I study whether expected financial returns affect corporate venture capitalists' investment decisions using a novel dataset of UK corporate venture capital investments identified through administrative data. Leveraging the termination of the UK Corporate Venturing Scheme, a corporate tax relief program, as well as eligibility requirements based on the size of the investor, the exogenous financial incentive attracts less experienced corporate investors who allocate lower total investments and engage in shorter investment periods. I further demonstrate that ventures invested in by financially motivated CVCs exhibit a lower rate of trade sale and IPO exit, a reduced probability of dissolution within five years, but they do not show a lower post-investment asset growth rate.


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