5th Future of Financial Information Conference 2023 (FutFinInfo)

The 5th edition will take place at HEC Paris on 15 – 16 May 2023 in the Z building. The conference will proceed primarily in person, with speakers, discussants and session chairs in particular attending on site. As participant, you are also welcome at HEC’s scenic campus in Jouy en Josas. Alternatively, you have the option to attend remotely and we will do our best to provide you with an interactive experience.

From satellite images to natural language processing (NLP), the way investors source, process and trade on information is constantly evolving. The aim of this conference is to understand the ever-changing nature of financial information and its consequences for market efficiency. The conference also has a track record of supporting PhD students, who are the future of our profession. Learn more on the FutFinInfo website here and follow the presentations live on Twitter with "#FutFinInfo".

This year on HEC Paris campus, organizers Finance Professors Thierry Foucault of HEC Paris and Michal Dzielinski of Stockholm Business School, with their PhD students Yurii Handziuk, Teodor Duevski and Tianhao Yao, welcome keynote speakers Krell Chair Professor of Finance Lin Peng at Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York, and Bruno Biais, Professor of Finance at HEC Paris.

Session Overview
Date: Monday, 15/May/2023

Z Building, HEC campus

9:30am - 10:00am Coffee and registration

10:00am - 10:15am Introductory remarks

10:15am - 11:30am K1: Keynote Session with Bruno Biais
Chair: Thierry Foucault
Speaker: Bruno Biais
"Money and Information"

11:30am - 12:30pm P1: Poster session (with coffee)
From in-person to online: the new shape of the VC industry
PhD Student Liudmila Alekseeva1, PhD Student Silvia Dalla Fontana2, PhD Student Caroline Genc3, PhD Student Hedieh Rashidi Ranjbar4 1: IESE Business School; 2: USI Lugano and SFI; 3: Université Paris Dauphine-PSL; 4: University of Michigan, Stephen M. Ross School of Business

Corporate Social Responsibility Programs and Shareholder Value
PhD Student Jinyoung Kim
Boston College, United States of America

What Does the Market Know?
Irina Luneva
The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, United States of America

Asset Pricing with Complexity
PhD Student Mads Bibow Busborg Nielsen
Université de Lausanne (SFI), Switzerland

Futures Trading Costs and Market Microstructure Invariance: Identifying Bet Activity
Prof. Ai Jun Hou, Prof. Lars Nordén, Dr. Caihong Xu
Stockholm Business School, Sweden

ETFs, Anomalies and Market Efficiency
Dr. Ilias Filippou1, PhD Student Songrun He2, Dr. Sophia Zhengzi Li3, Prof. Guofu Zhou4
1: Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, United States of America; 2: Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, United States of America; 3: Rutgers University; 4: Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, United States of America

12:30pm - 1:30pm Lunch

1:30pm - 3:00pm

1A: On which information to rely?
Chair: Marcus Painter

The Social Signal
Anthony Cookson1, Runjing Lu2, William Mullins3, Marina Niessner4
1: University of Colorado at Boulder; 2: University of Alberta; 3: University of California, San Diego; 4: University of Pennsylvania
Discussant: Isabella Wolfskeil (Federal Reserve Board of Governors)

Information Waves and Firm Investment
PhD Student Feng Chi
Cornell University, United States of America
Discussant: Olivier Dessaint (INSEAD)

1B: Informational frictions
Chair: Sophie Moinas
Uncertainty about What’s in the Price
Joel PERESS1, Daniel SCHMIDT2
1: INSEAD, France; 2: HEC-Paris, France
Discussant: Alberto Mokak Teguia (University of British Columbia)

Market opacity and fragility
Prof. Giovanni Cespa1, Prof. Xavier Vives2
1: Bayes Business School, United Kingdom; 2: IESE Business School
Discussant: Sabrina Buti (Université Paris Dauphine-PSL)

3:00pm - 3:30pm Coffee

3:30pm - 5:00pm

2A: Analysts and information acquisition
Chair: Petri Jylhä
All in a Day's Work: What Do We Learn from Analysts' Bloomberg Usage?
Azi Ben-Rephael2, Bruce Carlin3, Zhi Da4, Ryan Israelsen1
1: Michigan State University, United States of America; 2: Rutgers University; 3: Rice University; 4: Notre Dame University
Discussant: Rawley Heimer

What Do Questions Reveal? Skill Acquisition, Detection, and Recognition in the Capital Markets
Prof. Ling Cen1, PhD Student Yanru Han1, Prof. Jarrad Harford2
1: The Chinese University of Hong Kong; 2: University of Washington
Discussant: Tamara Nefedova (ESCP Business School)

2B: The wisdom (and madness) of crowds
Wisdom of the Institutional Crowd: Implications for Anomaly Returns
AJ Chen, Gerard Hoberg, Miao Ben Zhang
University of Southern California, United States of America

When Crowds Aren’t Wise: Biased Signals From Investor Social Networks and its Price Impact
PhD Student Edna Lopez Avila,
Prof. Charles Martineau, Prof. Jordi Mondria University of Toronto, Canada                                                                                      
Discussant: Roberto Gomez (London Business School)

5:00pm - 6:00pm Cocktail reception

8:00pm Conference dinner (by invitation)

Date: Tuesday, 16/May/2023

Z Building HEC campus

9:30am - 10:00am Coffee and registration

10:00am - 11:30am
3A: 200 years of textual analysis
Chair: Alejandro Lopez-Lira
Effects of Information Overload on Financial Markets: How Much Is Too Much?
Dr. Alejandro Bernales1, Dr. Marcela Valenzuela2, Dr. Ilknur Zer3
1: Universidad de Chile; 2: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Chile; 3: Federal Reserve Board
Discussant: Theis Ingerslev Jensen (Copenhagen Business School)

(Almost) 200 Years of News-Based Economic Sentiment
Jules H. van Binsbergen1,3, Svetlana Bryzgalova2,4, PhD Student Mayukh Mukhopadhyay2, Varun Sharma5
1: Wharton; 2: London Business School; 3: NBER; 4: CEPR; 5: Nanyang Business School
Discussant: SIMONA ABIS (COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY)

3B: Information in non-equity markets
The Value of Data to Fixed Income Investors
Prof. Jian Li1, Prof. Jennie Bai2, Prof. Asaf Manela3
1: Columbia University, United States of America; 2: Georgetown University; 3: Reichman University and Washington University of St. Louis,
Discussant: Sean Seunghun Shin (Aalto University)

The Adoption of Artificial Intelligence by Venture Capitalists
PhD Student Maxime Bonelli
HEC Paris, France
Discussant: Gilles Chemla

11:30am - 12:00pm Coffee

12:00pm - 1:30pm

4A: Risk factors, anomalies, or just stories?
Chair: Irina Zviadadze
Peer-reviewed theory does not help predict the cross-section of stock returns
Andrew Y. Chen1, Alejandro Lopez-Lira2, Tom Zimmermann3
1: Federal Reserve Board; 2: University of Florida; 3: University of Cologne, Germany
Discussant: Yinan Su (Johns Hopkins University)

Anomaly or Possible Risk Factor? Simple-To-Use Tests
Benjamin Holcblat1, Abraham Lioui2, Michael Weber3
1: University of Luxembourg; 2: EDHEC Business School.; 3: Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, CEPR, and NBER.
Discussant: Carter Davis (Indiana University)

4B: Technology and lending
Chair: Jean-Edouard Colliard
Does IT help? Information Technology in Banking and Entrepreneurship
Yannick Timmer1, Sebastian Doerr2, Toni Ahnert3, Nicola Pierri4
1: Federal Reserve Board; 2: BIS; 3: ECB; 4: IMF
Discussant: Junli Zhao (Bayes Business School)

Borrowing from a Bigtech Platform
Prof. Jian Li1, Prof. Stefano Pegoraro2
1: Columbia University, United States of America; 2: University of Notre Dame, Mendoza College of Business
Discussant: Jing Zeng (University of Bonn)

1:30pm - 2:30pm Lunch

2:30pm - 4:00pm

5A: Pushing the boundaries of finance

Chair: Jérôme Dugast
Informed Trading Intensity
Vincent Bogousslavsky1, Vyacheslav Fos1, Dmitriy Muravyev2
1: Boston College; 2: Michigan State University
Discussant: George Malikov (University of Western Ontario, Ivey Business School)

Proving You Can Pick Stocks Without Revealing How
Prof. Alexander Chinco
Baruch College, United States of America
Discussant: Michele Fabi (Ecole Polytechnique, CREST, IP Paris)

5B: Who benefits from your data?
Chair: Christophe Perignon
Open Banking and Customer Data Sharing: Implications for FinTech Borrowers
PhD Student Rachel J. Nam1,2
1: Goethe University Frankfurt; 2: Leibniz Institute for Financial Research SAFE
Discussant: Matthias Efing (HEC Paris)

Consumer Surveillance and Financial Fraud
Bo Bian1, Michaela Pagel2, Huan Tang3
1: University of British Columbia; 2: Columbia Graduate School of Business, NBER, and CEPR.; 3: London School of Economics and CEPR
Discussant: Guillaume Vuillemey (HEC Paris)

4:00pm - 4:15pm Break

4:15pm - 5:30pm

K2: Keynote Session with Lin Peng
Chair: Michał Dzieliński
Speaker: Lin Peng
"Navigating the Information Landscape: The Role of Social Networks in Financial Markets"

5:30pm - 5:45pm Concluding remarks

“This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (Grant agreement No 101018214)”