Research
Research Interest: corporate governance, institutional investor, mutual funds, investor behavior, and ESG.
Published and Accepted Papers
Product Market Similarity, Benchmarking, and Corporate Fraud, with Audra Boone, William Grieser and Parth Venkat, forthcoming, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis
Best Paper Award for New Zealand Finance Meeting (2018)
Semifinalist for Best Paper Award FMA (2018)
Sustainability or Performance? Ratings and Fund Managers' Incentives, with Nickolay Gantchev and Mariassunta Giannetti, Journal of Financial Economics, 155(103831) (2024), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2024.103831.
China International Conference in Finance Best Paper Award 2022
Featured in Principals for Responsible Investments Blog
Semifinalist for the Best Paper Award FMA 2021
CEO Succession Roulette, with Dragana Cvijanovic and Nickolay Gantchev, Management Science, 69(10) (2023): 5794-5815, https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4572.
Move Fast and Break Things! Innovation-Intensive Strategy, Organizational Permissiveness, and Corporate Wrongdoing, with William Grieser, Ryan Krause, Richard Priem, and Andrei Simonov, Long Range Planning, 56, no. 2 (2023): 102294, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lrp.2023.102294
Does Money Talk? Divestitures and Corporate Environmental and Social Policies, with Nickolay Gantchev and Mariassunta Giannetti, Review of Finance, Volume 26, Issue 6, November 2022, Pages 1469–1508, https://doi.org/10.1093/rof/rfac029.
Previously titled Does Money Talk? Market Discipline through Selloffs and Boycotts
Featured in Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, ECGI, Vox, and World Economic Forum
Semifinalist for the Best Paper Award FMA 2020
Working Papers
Personal Convictions and ESG Investing, with Sugata Ray, and Parth Venkat
Revise & Resubmit: Journal of Banking and Finance
Abstract: We study whether fund managers’ personal convictions regarding environmental causes relate to their investment decisions and performance, using vehicle purchases and charitable donations as proxies for managers’ convictions. We find that environmentally committed managers hold more of their portfolios in green stocks and perform significantly better among those holdings. This outperformance can be explained by superior characteristic selectivity, higher active share, and avoidance of large negative returns in green stocks. As such, environmentally committed mutual fund investors could consider managers’ personal convictions in addition to conventional fund-level environmental measures (e.g. disclosures, prior holdings, etc.) in selecting funds.
Presented at Financial Management Association Annual Meeting (2022)*
Investor Heterogeneity and Market Discipline: Evidence from Mutual Fund Adviser Misconduct
Abstract: Does investor heterogeneity affect the power of market discipline in mutual fund adviser misconduct? We show a significant difference in flow sensitivity to misconduct disclosures between institutional and retail investors. Market discipline is particularly weak among retail investors with limited attention. The effectiveness of discipline by investors in fact predicts misconduct likelihood. Investors' differential ability to impose market discipline also affects fund management profitability and turnover along with subsequent fund performance. Overall, our study highlights the real effects of investor heterogeneity on market discipline and casts doubt on the safety of retail investments under the current regulatory and market environment.
Presented at FIRS Conference (2019), Midwest Finance Association Annual Meeting (2019), Financial Management Association Annual Meeting (2018), Michigan State University, Southern Methodist University, University of Texas Arlington, Villanova University and University of Alabama
Shareholder Satisfaction with Overlapping Directors, with Miriam Schwartz-Ziv
Abstract: We find that mutual fund shareholders are particularly supportive of directors who serve simultaneously on a corporate board and a mutual fund board (overlapping directors). Such support is observed both for connected funds, which share a director with a company, and for non-connected funds, which do not share a director with the company. Our results imply that the benefits overlapping directors offer to all fund shareholders exceed the costs. Mutual funds are particularly supportive of overlapping directors when monitoring is needed. Our results suggest overlapping directors are more valuable to fund shareholders than to other types of shareholders.
Presented at Financial Management Association Annual Meeting (2017), Law and Economics (2018)*, University of Windsor, University of Melbourne*, IDC*, and Midwest Finance Association Annual Meeting (2019)*
Featured in The CLS Blue Sky Blog
* Presented by coauthor or invited
Work in Progress
To the Moon! How mutual fund investors react to shocks to retail stock demand (With Clemens Sialm and Parth Venkat)
Human Capital in mutual funds. (With Zack Liu and Parth Venkat)