[1] Common Ownership and Perceived Competition Networks (solo-authored, Job Market Paper)
Committee members: Xiao-Jun Zhang (Chair), Sunil Dutta, Tanya Paul
Presentations: Presented at 2025 Western Region Doctoral Student Faculty Interchange (DSFI), 2025 AAA Annual Meeting Emerging and Innovative Research, UC Berkeley Accounting Seminar, 2026 Hawaii Accounting Research Conference (scheduled)
Abstract: Many natural competitors are co-owned by a small number of large institutional investors. While concerns about the anticompetitive potential of common ownership are growing, empirical evidence on its impact remains mixed. This study examines whether common ownership shapes whom firms internally assess as competitors. Internally assessed competitors reflect firms’ attention allocation and reveal their strategic focus in investment and operational decisions. Using scraped data on named competitors disclosed in the Competition sections of 10-K filings from 1995 to 2023, I track how these relationships evolve over time. I first validate that competitor removals capture meaningful shifts by showing that they coincide with real changes in competitive interactions. Building on this validation, I use associational analyses and a difference-in-differences design leveraging exogenous institutional mergers to show that greater ownership overlap increases the likelihood that firms remove commonly owned peers from their internally assessed competitor lists. Collectively, these findings offer new insights into antitrust debates on common ownership and demonstrate the importance of perceived competitive relations.
[2] New Drug R&D Strategies of Competitive Manufacturers via Collaborating with a Third-party Institution (with Minyue Jin, Jiajia Nie, Xiaoxuan Xu, Xiaohang Yue)
Revise and resubmit at Production and Operations Management
Presentation: Presented at the 2025 POMS International Conference in China
Abstract: Developing new drugs often takes more than a decade. One way to speed up the process is phase licensing, where firms license patents from third-party R&D institutions to build on existing experimental data. Although this reduces costs and timelines, it requires a fixed one-time fee. We study how competing pharmaceutical firms choose phase licensing strategies and how suppliers set their licensing terms. Using a game-theoretic model with one patent supplier and two competing firms, we show that when licensing is non-exclusive and fees are low, firms may fall into a prisoner’s dilemma: they both license despite reduced profits, since abandoning licensing would be worse. For suppliers, we find that licensing to a single firm can be more profitable than licensing to both, as eliminating competition outweighs the benefits of earlier market entry. This exclusive licensing can also partially resolve the prisoner’s dilemma between firms, improving outcomes.
[3] Earnings Management Trade-offs in the Low-Carbon Transition (with Ning Gao, Mengnan Guo, Yifan He)
Under Review at Contemporary Accounting Research
Presentations: Presented at 2025 workshop on Corporate Sustainability Reporting in Transition: Business Impacts and Local Policy Responses at the University of Nottingham, the 2025 forum on Low-Carbon Transition and Financial Reporting Quality at the Institute of Global Governance and Innovation, City University of Hong Kong, University of Manchester, 2026 Hawaii Accounting Research Conference (scheduled)
Abstract: We study the complex trade-offs that firms face under China’s Low-Carbon City and Province (LCCP) policy. Employing a stacked difference-in-differences (DiD) approach, we find that firms significantly decrease their accrual-based earnings management (AEM) and increase real earnings management (REM) in response to the implementation of the LCCP, with the effect being particularly pronounced among emissions-intensive firms. The LCCP’s effect on AEM is more pronounced under tighter media or auditor scrutiny, which is not always true on REM. The LCCP’s effect on REM amplifies under intensified earnings pressure, which is not true on AEM. Following the LCCP’s implementation, firms exhibiting less aggressive ex-ante AEM or a more substantial reduction in AEM tend to receive more generous financial support from the government. Meanwhile, firms that shift more aggressively towards REM exhibit weaker ex-post financial and emissions performances. Overall, our findings indicate that earnings pressure, the pursuit of government support, and changing costs of earnings management strategies complicate firms’ incentives for earnings management during the low-carbon transition.
[4] Silence After the Call: Strategic Withholding of Earnings Call Materials on Corporate Websites (with Wilbur Chen, Omri Even-Tov and Summer Zhao)
Presentation: UC Berkeley Accounting Seminar
Abstract: This study examines corporate website disclosures of earnings conference call materials. The data reveal substantial variation in both the types of materials disclosed (i.e., slides, transcripts, and audio recordings) and their temporal availability. Notably, we identify intermittent “call disclosure gaps”, defined as the omission of materials in a given quarter that were previously disclosed. We find consistent evidence that these gaps are strategic since they are (1) more likely to occur when the company experiences negative events, and (2) associated with greater risks of future financial restatements, class-action lawsuits and operating performance declines. Cross-sectional analyses reveal that these gaps are more related to future negative events in firms where investors are more reliant on corporate websites for information, and among firms with greater information asymmetry and weaker corporate governance. Lastly, investors do not appear to react to the disclosure gaps but react negatively to the subsequent restatement and class-action events related to these gaps. Overall, our findings highlight an unexplored yet economically meaningful channel through which firms manage the post-earnings information environment.
(Manuscripts of working papers are available upon request)
Work In Progress
[5] U.S. Semiconductor Export Controls, Knowledge Across Borders, and Domestic Innovation (with Valerie Zhang)