Research

"Does Regulatory Jurisdiction Affect the Quality of Investment-Adviser Regulation?" with Alan Kwan and Tarik Umar. (2019). American Economic Review (2020 IF: 9.2). 109(10):3681-3712. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20180412. (Official Link. Referred to by a statement by SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson on June 5, 2019.)

• Investment advisers switching from SEC to state regulator oversight due to the Dodd-Frank Act had around 30-40% more misconduct.

"Social connections with COVID-19-affected areas increase compliance with mobility restrictions" with Alan Kwan and Vesa Pursiainen.  (2020). Science Advances (2020 IF: 13.1). 6(47):1-10. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc3054.  (Data: Facebook Data For Good. Media: 7th Space Family Portal, ScienMag, The Tyee, Daily Kos. NUS Links to the Research Summary: LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, Telegram.)

•  A one-standard-deviation increase in social connections with China and Italy - the first countries with major outbreaks of the virus – increases the effectiveness of mobility restrictions by around 50%.

"Bank of Japan Equity Purchases: The (Non-)Effects of Extreme Quantitative Easing" with Randall Morck and Yupana Wiwattanakantang. (2021). Review of Finance (2021 IF: 5.1). 25(3):713-743. (Twitter🧵. Official Journal Link. Research Digest. Referenced in a 2021 French Council of Economic Analysis report on what the ECB can do) DOI: 10.1093/rof/rfaa029. Runner-up for the IQAM Prize for the best investments paper in 2020/2021. Included in CFA Institute's report on ETFs and Systemic Risks.

• The BOJ ETF purchase policy seems to have price effects but firms appear to "cash in" rather than increase tangible capital investment or R&D spending.

"The Impact of ride-hail surge factors on taxi bookings" with Sumit Agarwal, Shih-Fen Cheng, and Jussi Keppo. (2022). Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies (2022 IF: 15.5). 136(March):103508. DOI: 10.1016/j.trc.2021.103508 (Twitter🧵. Official Journal Link.)

• Incorporating surge factor data improves demand prediction and allocation of incumbent taxi providers and improves allocative efficiency.

"Not Coming Home: Trade and Economic Political Uncertainty in American Supply Chain Networks" with Jing Wu and Miaozhe Han. (2022). Manufacturing & Service Operations Management (2020 IF: 7.6). (Official Journal Link. Twitter🧵.Media: Sina, Reuters, CUHK Blog, The Economist)

• Rather than move supply chain networks home, higher U.S. trade policy uncertainty instead predicts more supply chain movements abroad.

"Positive Risk-Free Interest Rates in Decentralized Finance" with Mike Kirby and Jonathan Reiter. (Referenced in a blog post here and here by David Rosenthal (ex-Chief Scientist of Nvidia), related Twitter🧵, Referenced in a Coppola Comment post by Frances Coppola) (Accepted for the IEEE Blockchain Computing and Applications 2023 Conference)

• Turing-complete languages face a halting problem a la Turing (1937) which also applies to whether a smart contract can be set up to guarantee a risk-free payment.

"Computer Science Abstractions To Help Reason About Decentralized Stablecoin Design" with Mike Kirby and Jonathan Reiter. (2023). IEEE Access (2022 IF: 3.476). (Referenced in a blog post here by David Rosenthal (ex-Chief Scientist of Nvidia), Media: Seeking Alpha, Blockhead).

• We show that algorithmic stablecoins cannot be both safe and capital-efficient at the same time.

"Non-Performing Loan Disposals without Resolution" with Tianyue Ruan and Miao Meng. (2023). Management Science. (Twitter🧵 & Follow-Up Tweet on the relevant 2021 National Audit Office Report. World Bank Blog, The Economist, The Indian Express, Epsilon Theory, ABFER Research Digest)

• NPL transactions from banks to local asset management companies end up in the hands of bank borrowers, still exposing them to substantial financial distress risk.

"Investment Plans, Uncertainty, and Misallocation" with Alan Kwan, Yosuke Kimura, and Eugene Tan. (R&R Journal of Financial Economics)

• Presentations: AEA 2022, Asian Econometric Society 2021, ABFER 2021, 11th Rimini Macro-Finance, Barcelona GSE Summer Forum 2021, CICM 2021, NASMES 2021, ITAM Finance Conference 2021,  VMACS Junior Conference, Brock University, University of Toronto

• Firms' investment plans appear important for actual investment and respond to intra-fiscal year firm-level economic conditions, implying existing macroeconomic models with imperfect information overstate the importance of informational frictions.

"RegTech" with Zach Kowaleski, Alan Kwan, and Andrew Sutherland. (Oxford Business Law Blog. MIT Ideas Made to Matter. FintechImpact Podcast. Dash RegTech Insights 2022. Twitter.) (R&R Journal of Financial Economics)

• Presentations: Columbia, Duke, MIT, OSU, Notre Dame, Villanova, UT Austin, RFS-GSU Fintech Conference, FARS 2022, APOCFW, HKUST (Guangzhou), 6th SFFS, Mannheim, HKU, Cincinnati

• Rule 17-5a compelled financial advisers to invest in regtech software, which leads to a decrease in misconduct but may increase the market power of larger firms.

"Public Forecasts, Internal Projections, and Corporate Financial Policy" with Alan Kwan and Yosuke Kimura. (R&R Review of Finance)

• Presentations: AFA 2021, SFS Asia-Pacific 2019, Greater Bay Area Finance 2019, 2020 Japanese Economic Association Meeting, HKU, Renmin University, SAIF, CityUHK, HKUST

• Compared to internal forecasts, public forecasts appear biased to trade-off between optimism in case of financial constraints versus pessimism to receive higher managerial payoffs.

"Ownership Networks and Bid-Rigging" with Kentaro Asai. (Twitter🧵. Blog. Media: Business Times.)

• Presentations: 2019 Econometric Society Australasian Meeting, 2019 APIOC, ANU, University of Tokyo, Hitotsubashi

• The effect of common ownership networks in public auctions on bid-rigging appears to increase the prices that government agencies pay.

"Active Mutual Fund Common Owners' Returns and Proxy Voting Behavior" with Zhenghui Ni and Qiaozhi Ye. 

• Presentations: EFA Poster 2023 (Scheduled), NFI-Oxford Conference on Common Ownership, Experimental IO and Governance 2023, UIUC, MFA 2023, PFMC 2023 (Cancelled), Singapore Scholar Symposium 2022, ABFC 2022,  ISAFE 2022, CFAM 2022, FMCG 2022, AsianFA 2022, NUS RMI 2021

• Actively managed mutual funds investing with more common ownership have higher returns (gross and net of fees) and vote to reduce executive pay-performance sensitivity and for directors with appointments at competitors. 

"Foregone Consumption and Return-Chasing Investments" with Sumit Agarwal and Pulak Ghosh. 

• Presentations: EFA 2020, Boulder Household Conference 2019

• Investors chase positive headline stock market index returns on the upside by increasing investment and decreasing consumption but do not respond on the downside.

"Data Sharing in a Fintech Lending Ecosystem" with Yiyao Wang. (Asian FA 2023 Best Paper Award)

• Presentations: CICF 2021, RMI 2021 Annual Meeting, AsianFA 2023, KAIST, Yonsei, SKKU, SNU

• Fintech lenders with alternative data or better credit risk models than banks but with higher funding costs can increase social welfare by sharing data with them.

"Decentralized Finance and Financial Regulation: Limits On Mutable Turing Machines" with Mike Kirby and Jonathan Reiter.

• We study how decentralized finance architectures can be regulated and show that compliance requires compromising on the richness of permissible changes. 

"The Trickle-Down Effect of Government Debt and Social Unrest"

• Presentations: EFA 2023, ADBI, IMF Asia-Pacific Group, Reserve Bank of Australia, ABFER 2022, ADBI

• I examine the social costs of local government debt in China by analyzing the delay in procurement payments to contractors and the resulting impact on firm fundamentals and employee actions.

Charoenwong, B., and Alan Kwan (2021). "Alternative Data, Big Data, and Applications to Finance". In P. Moon Sub Choi, S. H. Huang (Ed.), Fintech with Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Blockchain. Springer. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-981-33-6137-9_2

Charoenwong, B. (2021). COVID-19 in the global production network. In S. Agarwal, Z. He, B. Yeung (Ed.), Impact of COVID-19 on Asian economies and policy responses. (1st ed., pp. 172). World Scientific. https://doi.org/10.1142/12072.