Dear Colleagues and Students,

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA) will host the “UM Distinguished Visiting Scholar Seminar” on 17/04/2024 (Wednesday) and is pleased to invite Prof. Allaudeen HAMEED as the speaker.

Title: Long-Term Earnings Forecasts, Sentiment Manipulation and Stock Returns
Speaker: Prof. Allaudeen HAMEED, Tang Peng Yeu Professor in Finance, National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore

Date: Wednesday, 17 April 2024
Time: 10:00 am
Venue: E22-G015
Language: English

Abstract:

We document that the negative relation between long-term expected earnings growth (LTG) and future stock returns is amplified by managerial manipulation of earnings. We isolate the price effects of manipulation from biased investor extrapolation of LTG using the inter-segment distortion of earnings in conglomerates. The underperformance in high LTG conglomerates is particularly pronounced in firms that manipulate segment earnings, with an annual alpha of -10% for high-minus-low LTG firms. This predictive effect accentuates under conditions of high shorting constraints or positive investor sentiment. Difference-in-difference analyses, leveraging SFAS 131 disclosure requirements, reveal analysts’ forecasts of LTG are unaffected by segment-level profit distortions in conglomerates, distinguishing overpricing due to managerial manipulation from over-extrapolation of LTG. Consistent with the sentiment effects, mutual funds increase their active holdings in these manipulated conglomerates and experience subsequent long-term underperformance.

Speaker’s Bio:

Prof. Allaudeen Hameed is Tang Peng Yeu Professor in Finance at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School. He served as the Head of Finance Department at NUS for many years. Hameed has also held visiting positions at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Texas at Austin. Prof. Hameed`s research interests include return-based trading strategies, stock return co-movement, liquidity, role of financial analysts and international financial markets. His research work has been published in top finance journals such as The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, The Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Review of Finance, and Management Science. He is Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and Senior Fellow of Asian Bureau of Finance and Economic Research (ABFER). He also served on editorial boards of several other academic journals including: Financial Management (Associate Editor), International Review of Finance (Editor), Pacific-Basin Finance Journal (Associate Editor), Journal of Applied Finance (Associate Editor), and Asian-Pacific Journal of Financial Studies.

Best Regards,
Faculty of Business Administration

Dear Colleagues and Students,

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA) will host the “UM Distinguished Visiting Scholar Series” on 28/11/2023 (Tuesday) and is pleased to invite Prof. Xin CHANG as the speaker.

Title: Discontinuous Distribution of Test Statistics Around Significance Thresholds in Empirical Accounting Studies
Speaker: Prof. Xin CHANG, Professor of Finance, Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

Date: 28/11/2023 (Tuesday)
Time: 10:30 – 12:00
Language: English
Venue: E22-G004

Registraiton: https://go.um.edu.mo/fns7iybe

Abstract:

We examine test statistics (e.g., p-values and t-statistics) reported in experimental and archival studies published in six leading accounting journals, finding discontinuities in their distributions around conventional significance thresholds (p-values of 0.05 and 0.01). Specifically, we find an unusual abundance of test statistics that are just significant. Further analysis reveals that these discontinuities are more prominent in experimental than in archival studies. The difference in discontinuity between experimental and archival studies is related to several proxies for researcher degrees of freedom. Overall, we provide suggestive evidence that some researchers use exercise discretion to obtain and report statistically significant results and show how such behaviors differ according to research method in the accounting literature. Our findings indicate that a healthy skepticism of some just-significant test statistics is warranted.

Speaker’s Bio:

Professor Xin CHANG is a Professor of Finance and Associate Dean (Research) at Nanyang Business School. His research primarily focuses on corporate finance, particularly capital structure, corporate innovation, sustainable finance, and corporate social/environmental responsibility. He has published extensively in top-tier business journals such as the Journal of Finance. His research findings were used by the Securities and Exchange Commission of the U.S. to support the new regulation rules and gained media coverage in Business Week, Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and many others. Before returning to NTU in 2017, he held tenured positions as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, and a Professor of Financial Economics (University Reader) and John Maynard Keynes Fellow in Financial Economics at the University of Cambridge. He is also an associate editor for the International Review of Finance and Asia-Pacific Journal of Financial Studies.

For enquiries: carlaleong@um.edu.mo

Best Regards,
Faculty of Business Administration

Dear Colleagues and Students,

We are pleased to announce our 2023/2024 FBA Distinguished Scholar Seminar, organized by the Business Research and Training Center (BRTC),  with details below.

Title: Modular Production and Endogenous Strength of Comparative Advantages 
Speaker: Professor Zhiyuan LI, Professor, Fudan University

Date:            Tuesday, 24 October 2023
Time:           2:30 p.m. – 3:30p.m.
Venue:        E22-G004
Language:  English

Registration: https://go.um.edu.mo/vdwkgmjn

All academic staff, students and interested parties are cordially invited.

 Warmest regards,

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Dear Colleagues and Students,

We are pleased to announce our 2023/2024 FBA Distinguished Scholar Seminar, organized by the Business Research and Training Center (BRTC),  with details below.

Title: Information Supporting Investor Valuations: Evidence from a Comparative Content Analysis of Analyst Reports and Form 10-K 
Speaker: Professor Mary BARTH, Joan E. Horngren Professor of Accounting, Emerita at Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB)

Date:            Tuesday, 26 September 2023
Time:           10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Format:      Zoom (online)
Language:  English

Registration: https://go.um.edu.mo/ccuunhum

All academic staff, students and interested parties are cordially invited.

Warmest regards,

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Dear Colleagues and Students,

We are pleased to announce our 2023/2024 FBA Distinguished Scholar Seminar, organized by the Business Research and Training Center (BRTC),  with details below.

Title: Building Research Programs in Tourism and Hospitality: A Personal Journey 
Speaker: Professor Xiang (Robert) LI, Professor, Temple University

Date:            Friday, 25 August 2023
Time:           10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.
Format:      Zoom (online)
Language:  English

Registration: https://go.um.edu.mo/eq371d2d

All academic staff, students and interested parties are cordially invited.

 Warmest regards,

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA)

Dear Colleagues and Students,

Faculty of Business Administration (FBA) will host the “UM Distinguished Visiting Scholar Series” on 21/07/2023 (Friday) and is pleased to invite Prof. Changliang ZOU as the speaker.

Title: Large-scale Detection of Differential Sparsity Structure
Speaker: Prof. Changliang ZOU, Distinguished professor at the School of Statistics and Data Science, Nankai University

Date: 21/07/2023 (Friday)
Time: 10:30 – 11:30
Language: English
Venue: E22-G008

Registraiton: https://go.um.edu.mo/gejgpxbv 

Abstract:
Two-sample multiple testing has a wide range of applications. Most of the literature considers simultaneous tests of equality of parameters. This work takes a different perspective and investigates the null hypotheses that the two support sets are equal. This formulation of the testing problem is motivated by the fact that in many applications where the two parameter vectors being compared are both sparse, we might be more concerned about the detection of differential sparsity structures rather than the difference in parameter magnitudes. A general approach to problems of this type is developed via a novel double thresholding (DT) filter. The DT filter first constructs a sequence of pairs of ranking statistics that fulfill global symmetry properties, and then chooses two data-driven thresholds along the ranking to simultaneously control the false discovery rate (FDR) and maximize the number of rejections. Several applications of the methodology are given, including tests for large-scale correlation matrices, high-dimensional linear models and Gaussian graphical models.

Speaker’s Bio:
Changliang Zou is distinguished professor at the School of Statistics and Data Science, Nankai University. He obtained his doctoral degree from Nankai University in 2008. His research interests include high-dimensional statistical inference, large-scale data stream analysis, change point and outlier detection. He has published over fifty papers in prominent journals in the field of statistics and industrial engineering, such as Annals of Statistics, Biometrika, Journal of the American Statistical Association, Mathematical Programming, Technometrics, Journal of Quality Technology, IISE Transactions. He is the recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars.

For enquiries: carlaleong@um.edu.mo

Best Regards,
Faculty of Business Administration