# Byoung-Hyoun Hwang

Professor of Finance at Nanyang Technological University researching beliefs and economic decisions, social interactions, empirical asset pricing, textual analysis, social media, alternative data, and AI interviews.

## Primary pages

- [About](https://www.bhwang.com/)
- [Research and publications](https://www.bhwang.com/papers.html)
- [Data and code](https://www.bhwang.com/code.html)
- [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=FBd3e1cAAAAJ)

## Research papers

- [Price-Based Return Comovement](https://www.bhwang.com/research/price-based-return-comovement.html): Investors appear to group companies based on their stock-price levels. This can cause excess-comovement.
- [Country-Specific Sentiment and Security Prices](https://www.bhwang.com/research/country-specific-sentiment-and-security-prices.html): Companies operating in less popular countries (among Americans) trade at a substantial discount in the US. Country popularity also affects foreign direct investment and cross-border mergers.
- [IPOs as Lotteries: Skewness Preference and First-Day Returns](https://www.bhwang.com/research/ipos-as-lotteries-skewness-preference-and-first-day-returns.html): Investors appear to treat IPOs like lotteries. This can cause temporary IPO overpricing and poor long-run performance.
- [It Pays to Write Well](https://www.bhwang.com/research/it-pays-to-write-well.html): Issuing financial disclosure documents that are difficult to read can cause firms to trade at a substantial discount.
- [Arbitrage Involvement and Security Prices](https://www.bhwang.com/research/arbitrage-involvement-and-security-prices.html): The presence of a well-functioning shorting market can help correct under-pricing.
- [Offsetting Disagreement and Security Prices](https://www.bhwang.com/research/offsetting-disagreement-and-security-prices.html): We put forward that investors generally are less excited about portfolios than they are about individual companies and that this has important asset pricing implications.
- [Why do Investors Like Short-Leg Securities? Evidence from a Textual Analysis of Buy Recommendations](https://www.bhwang.com/research/why-do-investors-like-short-leg-securities-evidence-from-a-textual-analysis-of-buy-recommendations.html): Our paper advocates for text-based methods as a complementary tool to investor surveys for extracting investor perceptions.
- [How Investors Pick Stocks: Global Evidence from 1,540 AI-Driven Field Interviews](https://www.bhwang.com/research/how-investors-pick-stocks-global-evidence-from-1-540-ai-driven-field-interviews.html): We use AI-driven interviews with 1,540 investors across ten countries to reveal thirteen distinct mechanisms that people actually use to pick stocks, exposing major heterogeneity and gaps in existing asset-pricing theories.
- [It Pays to Have Friends](https://www.bhwang.com/research/it-pays-to-have-friends.html): Social ties between corporate directors and CEOs appear to affect directors’ monitoring effectiveness.
- [Wisdom of Crowds: The Value of Stock Opinions Transmitted through Social Media](https://www.bhwang.com/research/wisdom-of-crowds-the-value-of-stock-opinions-transmitted-through-social-media.html): Stock opinions transmitted through social media can be very valuable.
- [Information Sharing and Spillovers: Evidence from Financial Analysts](https://www.bhwang.com/research/information-sharing-and-spillovers-evidence-from-financial-analysts.html): We suggest that high-skill finance professionals owe much of their success to the colleagues that surround them.
- [The Rate of Communication](https://www.bhwang.com/research/the-rate-of-communication.html): We quantify how contagious financial news and opinions are.
- [Listening in on Investors’ Thoughts and Conversations](https://www.bhwang.com/research/listening-in-on-investors-thoughts-and-conversations.html): We propose that investors’ natural desire to cast themselves in a favorable light can inadvertently lead to the propagation of noise.
- [The Impact of Word-of-Mouth Communication on Investors’ Decisions and Asset Prices](https://www.bhwang.com/research/the-impact-of-word-of-mouth-communication-on-investors-decisions-and-asset-prices.html): A survey of the empirical literature on the presence and economic consequences of word-of-mouth communication among investors.
- [Did the Game Stop for Hedge Funds?](https://www.bhwang.com/research/did-the-game-stop-for-hedge-funds.html): Retail investors increasingly use social media to coordinate and trade for ideological or strategic considerations.
- [Giving Users What They Want: Social Media and Anomalies](https://www.bhwang.com/research/giving-users-what-they-want-social-media-and-anomalies.html): Social media rewards creators for producing bullish content about stocks with low expected returns, helping amplify optimistic narratives about short-leg securities.
- [The Use and Usefulness of Big Data in Finance: Evidence from Financial Analysts](https://www.bhwang.com/research/the-use-and-usefulness-of-big-data-in-finance-evidence-from-financial-analysts.html): Our study documents how our increasing reliance on big data and technology is reshaping the role of human labor in finance.
- [Are Founder CEOs more Overconfident than Professional CEOs? Evidence from S&P 1500 Companies](https://www.bhwang.com/research/are-founder-ceos-more-overconfident-than-professional-ceos-evidence-from-s-p-1500-companies.html): Founder CEOs of S&P 1500 firms appear more confident (overconfident?) than their non-founder counterparts. Our finding may explain why large publicly traded firms managed by founder CEOs behave so differently.
- [Not Yet or Never? Deliberation State and the Reasons for Childlessness](https://www.bhwang.com/research/not-yet-or-never-deliberation-state-and-the-reasons-for-childlessness.html): Among childless adults settled against having children, lifestyle autonomy dominates; among those still open to parenthood, economic concerns are far more salient.