Job Market Candidates
Chunxiao Lu
Chunxiao Lu joined the Finance PhD program in 2019. She obtained her masters degree with distinction in Finance from Massey University (Palmerston North). Her research interests include empirical asset pricing, investment, institutional investor, political Finance, and ESG. Additional supervision provided by Shuang Chen.
Job market paper Political Connection, Corruption, and Demand-Driven Stock Returns
My job market paper examine how firm-level political connections impact stock returns through institutional demand. I find that demand shifts by mutual funds significantly contribute to the decline in concurrent stock returns: mutual funds generally reduce holdings of stocks with higher political connections, especially those headquartered in provinces with elevated corruption indices, following the 2012 Chinese anti-corruption campaign announcement. Overall, while political connections have an insignificant direct effect on stock returns as an additional pricing factor, they significantly and negatively impact stock returns through the fund demand channel. Under a characteristic-based demand asset pricing framework, I further investigate the aggregate price impact for stocks with different political connections. I show that stocks with stronger political connections experience greater price impacts, particularly among the least liquid stocks and around the announcement of the 2012 anti-corruption campaign. This demand-based approach offers a novel perspective to understand the decrease in stock returns, isolates the effects of political connections from those of corruption, and emphasizes the demand-side effects on increased volatility during periods marked by unexpected political events.
More information can be found on my website.
Placement: University of Canterbury (NZ)
Fanqi (Grace) Meng
Fanqi Meng joined the Finance PhD program in July 2017. Her current research interests include asset pricing and corporate finance including derivatives and hedge fund. Before joining the University of Melbourne, she studied at Loyola University Chicago for her masters degree.
Job market paper Friends versus Funding: Unpacking the Dynamics of Social Connections and Staged Financing in VC Investment
Placement: Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, School of Finance
Bochen Wu
Bochen Wu joined the Finance PhD program in 2018. Prior to this, he gained his MPhil and MCom in Finance from the University of Sydney. Bochen’s main research interests are in the areas of empirical asset pricing, behavioral finance, and emerging markets. Additional supervision provided by Joachim Inkmann and Yichao Zhu.
Job market paper Security Lending Market, Secondary Market Arbitrageurs, and ETF Mispricing
This paper examines the effect of ETF short-sale costs on ETF pricing efficiency. I find that ETF premiums are positively associated with the costs of borrowing ETFs, which are primarily a friction for ETF secondary market arbitrageurs. Leveraging two exogenous variations in ETF borrowing costs, I establish a causal effect of borrowing costs on ETF mispricing. Furthermore, the sensitivity of ETF mispricing on borrowing costs depends on the activeness of primary market arbitrageurs. Collectively, empirical findings in the paper emphasize the role of the secondary market participants in the ETF arbitrage mechanism, and reveal an interdependence between the primary and secondary markets.
For more information, please visit my personal website
Placement: Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Institute of Financial Studies
Email: wubochen@swufe.edu.cn
Yuyang Zhang
Yuyang Zhang joined the Finance PhD program in 2019. Her research interests lie in empirical corporate finance and corporate governance, with a particular focus on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) issues. She explores how corporate insiders, including managers, directors, and institutional investors, influence a firm's ESG practices and the underlying drivers behind their decision-making.
Yuyang is a CFA charterholder. Before pursuing her PhD, she worked at Hang Seng Bank, and earned a Bachelor of Management degree in Project Management from the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, followed by a Master of Finance from the University of Melbourne.
Job market paper The Effect of CEO Climate Impact Awareness on Corporate Carbon Emissions
This paper investigates the role of CEOs' personal awareness of the economic impacts of climate change on corporate carbon emissions, and the factors that shape this awareness. I find that CEOs' experiences with climate-related extreme weather during their impressionable years are associated with significantly lower Scope 1 carbon emissions. Both the availability and quality of climate change information are crucial in shaping long-term climate awareness. Specifically, the negative correlation between extreme weather experiences and emissions is stronger when these events occur after the public dissemination of climate science. Moreover, while experiences with salient warming weather have a pronounced negative effect on emissions, severe winter weather experiences during periods of limited information and emphasis on "global warming" lead to an opposite effect. Evidence from plausibly exogenous CEO turnover events supports the causal effect of CEOs' climate awareness in reducing firm carbon intensity. This effect of climate awareness is distinct from preference or attention shifts driven by early-life or recent experiences. Overall, this study documents CEOs' personal climate awareness as a determinant of corporate carbon emissions, and emphasizes the importance of the information environment in translating personal experiences into managerial behaviors.
For more information, please visit my personal website
Placement: University of Sydney
Student profile page
Email: yuyang.zhang@sydney.edu.au