Two papers by an assistant professor of Finance at LKCSB were given an award by PriceWaterhouseCoopers China in September 2023.
Asst Prof Weikai Li won the 2023 PwC 3535 Best Paper Award for “Inside Brokers”, which was published in the Journal of Financial Economics in 2021, and “Exchange-Traded Funds and Real Investment”, which was published in 2023 in the Review of Financial Studies.
Written with Abhiroop Mukherjee and Rik Sen, “Inside Brokers” looks at brokers used by corporate insider trades. The researchers found that analysts and mutual fund managers affiliated with such “inside brokers” have a substantial information advantage on the insider’s firm. These analysts issue more accurate earnings forecasts, and affiliated mutual funds trade the insider’s stock more profitably than their peers. This advantage persists even after these insider trades are publicly disclosed.
The other winning paper was co-written with Constantinos Antoniou, Xuewen Liu, Avanidhar Subrahmanyam and Chengzhu Sun. The paper documents how exchange-traded funds (ETFs) improve financial market efficiency by injecting more systematic information into stock prices, allowing corporate managers to make better investment decisions.
Just 10 papers received the PwC 3535 Forum Annual Paper Award in September 2023. The award focusses on young scholars aged 35 and under from mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao and selects 35 nominated papers published in prestigious academic journals. This list is eventually reduced to the 10 best papers. The judging is done by an independent committee made up of 19 academics from universities and research institutions.
“I was delighted to have two of my papers selected for this award. Winning and being recognized by PwC for my research has inspired me to work even harder to write papers that make a real-world impact,” said Prof Li.
Prof Li joined LKCSB in 2017 after he obtained his Ph. D in Finance from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include empirical asset pricing, behavioral finance, and climate finance.
