Jane Chen

Hi! I am a PhD candidate in Finance at the London School of Economics. My research fields are Financial Intermediation, Information Economics and Asset Pricing. I will join the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen as an Assistant Professor of Finance in the 2023-24 academic year. 



Contact: j.chen76[at]lse.ac.uk


[Download CV] 

Working Papers

See it, Say it, Shorted: Strategic Announcements in Short-Selling Campaigns (Job Market Paper)

SFS Cavalcade North America 2023 (scheduled)

I study how hedge funds strategically disclose their private information during short-selling campaigns. Using data on hedge funds' voluntary announcements and daily short positions in the EU market, I document the existence of two groups of funds: Announcers and Followers. Announcers, typically small and young, (1) establish short positions, (2) publish research reports about short targets, and (3) realise profits from the falling price within a short time frame. Followers, usually large, enter at the release of the report and increase their short positions even after announcers exit. To understand strategic interaction among short sellers, I provide a model to explain how size affects a short seller’s incentive and behaviour. Small funds benefit more from disclosing when facing binding leverage constraints. In contrast, large funds profit from others’ private information by offering capital to price discovery. Moreover, I characterize the effect of such short-selling campaigns on market efficiency.

The Economics of Mutual Fund Marketing, with Wenxi Jiang and Mindy Z.Xiaolan

SFS Cavalcade North America 2023 (scheduled), AFA 2023

We uncover a significant relationship between the persistence of marketing employment strategy and fund performance in the U.S. mutual fund industry. Using regulatory filings, we show a large heterogeneity in fund companies' marketing employment share and its persistence. A framework based on costly signaling and learning helps explain the observed marketing decision. The model features a separating equilibrium in which fund companies' optimal marketing employment share responds to their past performance differently, conditional on the skill level. Consistent with the model prediction, we show that the volatility of the marketing employment share negatively predicts the fund companies' long-term performance.