Publications

• 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.

  • Managers reshape the style and sentiment of their disclosure, and their voice emotion in response to the increasing machine and AI readership.
  • Featured on NBER Digest Lead Article, Bloomberg, Financial Times, CNBC, Guardian
  • CAPANA 2021 Conference Best Paper Award
  • Presentations: AFA 2022, NBER Economics of AI Conference, NBER Big Data and Securities Markets Conference, FIRS 2021
     

• Copycat Skills and Disclosure Costs: Evidence from Peer Companies’ Digital Footprints, with Sean Cao, Kai Du and Baozhong Yang, 2021, Journal of Accounting Research.

  • Digital footprints allow the identification of copycat investment firms and their targets. Copycat investment firms are selective in their imitation of peer firms' trading strategies, generating profits and imposing costs on disclosing companies.

Working Papers

• Managerial Risk Assessment and Fund Performance: Evidence from Textual Disclosure, with Sean Cao and Baozhong Yang, resubmission invited, Management Science.

  • We use state-of-the-art NLP tools to extract mutual fund managers' risk assessment from their narrative discussions, which predicts their future risk-taking and fund performance.
  • Featured on Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog
  • Presentations: MIT Asia Conference in Accounting, CICF 2021, 2022 Global AI Finance Research Conference, 35th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, MFA 2023
     

• Beyond the Lines: Deciphering Private Information from Fund Managers' Narratives, with Sean Cao and Baozhong Yang

  • Mutual fund managers disclose material information in their disclosure to fund shareholders, which can be captured by state-of-the-art natural language processing (NLP) algorithms and helps identify skilled fund managers.
  • Presentations: Conference on Financial Innovation at Stevens Business School, Winter Conference on Machine Learning and Business at University of Miami, Latest Advances in NLP at Technische Universität München, FMA 2022, MFA 2023
     

• Artificially Intelligent Analyst Sentiment and Market Behavior, with Vidhi Chhaochharia, Alok Kumar, and Ville Rantala, resubmission invited, Management Science.

  • A neural-network-based analyst sentiment captures the aggregated non-predictable errors in analyst forecasts, which varies with macroeconomic information, and helps create a profitable trading strategy.
  • Presentations: CICF 2023, 12th Miami Behavioral Finance Conference, FIRS 2022, Machine Learning in Finance Conference at University of Florida, Research in Behavioral Finance Conference 2022
     

• Riding on the FinTech Wave: Disruption and Value Creation in Corporate Takeovers, with Xiaoyu Wang

  • FinTech firms become increasingly attractive targets in corporate takeover markets. FinTech deals improve value creation to combine firms and generate spillover effects to peer firms.
  • Featured on Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog
  • Presentations: 36th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, FMA 2023, Eastern Finance Association 2023, China Fintech Research Conference 2022, AsianFA 2022
     

• 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