I am an Assistant Professor of Finance at Florida International University. My research broadly focuses on investments and corporate finance, with particular interests in the impact of FinTech on financial markets, corporations, and financial intermediaries and the application of machine learning and AI in Finance.
My research has been published in Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Accounting Research, and has been presented at conferences, such as the AFA, NBER Economics of AI Conference, NBER Big Data and Securities Markets Conference, FIRS, RCFS Winter Conference, Adam Smith Workshop and Cambridge Alternative Finance Conference. It has also been featured on Bloomberg, CNBC, Financial Times, The Guardian, NBER Digest, and Oxford Business Law Blog.
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My paper How to Talk When a Machine is Listening: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of AI received the Michael J. Brennan Best Paper Award at Review of Financial Studies in 2024.
Download Alan’s Curriculum Vitae.
Email: alan.zhang@fiu.edu
Ph.D. in Finance
Georgia State University
M.S. in Finance
Johns Hopkins University
B.A. in Economics
Xiamen University
How to Talk When a Machine is Listening: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of AI (with Sean Cao, Wei Jiang, and Baozhong Yang), 2023, Review of Financial Studies.
Copycat Skills and Disclosure Costs: Evidence from Peer Companies’ Digital Footprints (with Sean Cao, Kai Du, and Baozhong Yang), 2021, Journal of Accounting Research.
Managerial Risk Assessment and Fund Performance: Evidence from Textual Disclosure (with Sean Cao and Baozhong Yang), invited for resubmission, Management Science.
Predicting Forecasting Biases and Aggregate Outcomes using Neural Networks (with Vidhi Chhaochharia, Alok Kumar, and Ville Rantala), invited for resubmission, Management Science.
Generative AI and Asset Management (with Jinfei Sheng, Zheng Sun, and Baozhong Yang), invited for submission, Review of Financial Studies.
Beyond the Lines: Uncovering Private Information from Fund Managers' Narratives (with Sean Cao and Baozhong Yang), invited for resubmission, The Accounting Review.
Riding on the FinTech Wave: Disruption and Value Creation in Corporate Takeovers (with Xiaoyu Wang).
Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog, April 29, 2022, Deep Learning Mutual Fund Risk Assessment and Performance
Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog, March 18, 2022, How FinTech Affects Corporate Takeover Markets
Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog, September 29, 2021, Copycat Skills and Disclosure Costs
NBER Digest (Lead Article), December 2020, Corporate Reporting in the Era of Artificial Intelligence by Dylan Parry
Financial Times, December 5, 2020, Robo-Surveillance Shifts Tone of CEO Earnings Calls by Robin Wigglesworth
Guardian, December 5, 2020, Companies are Now Writing Reports Tailored for AI Readers – and It Should Worry Us by John Naughton
Oxford Business Law Blog, October 21, 2020, How to Talk When a Machine is Listening: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of AI
Bloomberg, October 20, 2020, Sweet-Talking CEOs are Starting to Outsmart the Robot Analysts by Gregor Stuart Hunter
CNBC, October 20, 2020, Corporate Execs are Talking Differently on Earnings Calls to Please the Machines by Bob Pisani
Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog, October 1, 2020, How to Talk When a Machine is Listening: Corporate Disclosure in the Age of AI