Mengqiao Du

Hello, I am an Assistant Professor at the National University of Singapore. I earned a Doctorate in Economic Sciences (Doktorin der Wirtschaftswissenschaften, Dr. rer. pol.) from the University of Mannheim in 2022 with the highest distinction (summa cum laude). 

Primary fields of research: 


 


Curriculum Vitae 


Google Scholar Page 


SSRN Author Page 


NUS Profile page

Contact: 

m.du[at]nus.edu.sg

NUS Business School

15 Kent Ridge Drive

119245, Singapore

Publications

Media Coverage: "Impact Of Bias" Yahoo Finance and ETF.com

  "Why stock pickers get seller’s remorse for past winners " Citywire

Abstract: We show that mutual fund managers' trading experiences bias their future repurchasing decisions. Specifically, a fund is 17% more likely to repurchase a stock when it previously sold the stock for a gain rather than for a loss. Fund managers still prefer to repurchase stocks they sold for a gain at a past fund after they switch to another fund. Against the informed-trading hypothesis, the repurchasing bias harms fund performance: repurchased winners outperform funds trading these winners by over 6% per year between the sale and repurchase; repurchased losers significantly outperform funds after the repurchase while repurchased winners do not. 

Award: Best paper award in Corporate Finance at the 7th International Young Finance Scholars' Conference

Media Coverage: "How Covid-19 Exacerbated Finance’s Gender Gap?" by Institutional Investor 

Abstract: This paper explores the shock of school closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to study the effect of childcare responsibilities on analyst forecasts. With manually collected data on whether analysts have children, I find that female analysts with children (mother analysts) are less likely to issue timely forecasts after school closures, compared to male analysts with children (father analysts). Mother analysts' forecasts also become less accurate after school closures, but the negative effect only exists among forecasts for firms with relatively low institutional ownership, suggesting that mother analysts prioritize maintaining the forecast accuracy for firms that are more important to their careers. Additionally, mother analysts shift forecast release times to avoid childcare hours. My findings imply that childcare responsibilities hurt the productivity of mother analysts more than that of father analysts, even though these women have established themselves in a competitive industry. 

Media Coverage: "You can’t be what you can’t see" The European

  "Female role models in politics, business, and STEM encourage gender pay parity" UK Business News

  "Why counter-stereotypical female role models are so important" WeAreTechWomen

Abstract: This paper examines the relation between counter-stereotypical female role models and women’s labor supply and occupational choices. Using hand-collected data from Gallup surveys that cover more than 50 years, we create a direct measure of counter-stereotypical female role models based on the fraction of local survey respondents who state that they admire famous women in business, politics, or science. We show that admiring counter-stereotypical female role models is associated with more women participating in the labor market, working in male-dominated and STEM industries, and taking managerial positions, which eventually alleviates the gender pay gap. 

Working papers

Presentations:  National University of Singapore*, University of Mannheim, AFA 2024 AFFECT Mentoring Event, 5th Analyst Conference (scheduled), AFA (scheduled)

Abstract: Women often lack the opportunity to enter exclusive social clubs, reaping fewer benefits from their social networks. We investigate, conditioning on having the opportunity to interact with the right people in a professional setting, whether women can better utilize connections for career performance and advancement than men. Using a unique dataset that documents when, where, and with whom a financial analyst interacts at investor conferences, we find that female analysts issue more accurate earnings forecasts than their male counterparts after establishing connections with the firms' executives. This result is robust to exploiting variations in connections within an analyst-firm pair. In addition, female analysts overcome homophily when interacting with executives, and their superior ability to utilize connections is recognized in both the capital and labor markets. Our findings suggest that women are better at capitalizing on professional connections and highlight the importance of promoting women's networking opportunities in the workplace.  

Presentations: Baruch College*, University of Maryland*, and National University of Singapore 

Abstract: This study leverages the precise timing of alternative data releases to investigate how investors use alternative data in financial decision-making. We find significant stock market responses to alternative data in the two days following its releases only when the information in alternative data is consistent with that in the previous financial report. This consistency particularly matters when the value-relevance of alternative data is low or when discrepancies exist within financial statements, complicating investor trading decisions based on a single data source. In addition, consistent signals lead to larger and more accurate analyst forecast revisions. Our findings indicate that capital markets value the consistency of signals from financial reporting and alternative data. Correspondingly, we find much more substantial price discovery of past financial information in the two days after data releases than non-release days in the post-earnings announcement period, suggesting that alternative data facilitates the information processing of existing financial information. This effect is more pronounced for firms with higher institutional ownership, larger analyst forecast dispersion, and lower stock liquidity. Overall, our findings provide novel insights into market reactions to alternative data, particularly highlighting the importance of its consistency with financial disclosure information in shaping investor behavior and market dynamics. 

Presentations:  Baylor University*, Fudan University*, University of Hawaii*, Hong Kong Polytechnic University*, Hainan University*, Hunan University*, Lehigh University*, Nankai University*, Penn State University*, Renmin University of China*, Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance at Shanghai Jiao Tong University*, Southern Methodist University*, Texas A&M University*, University of Texas at San Antonio*, 2023 SFS Cavalcade North America*, 2022 China International Risk Forum*, 2022 Financial Management Association meeting*, and 2022 Australasian Finance and Banking Conference

Abstract: The corporate bond fund industry features high capital concentration with a great fraction of capital managed by large funds. We find that while trades of large funds stabilize the corporate bond market in general, they introduce fragility to underlying bonds during illiquid markets. Using  a quasi-experiment that changes trading fund size exogenously, we show that bond return volatility increases (decreases) with trading fund size when market liquidity is low (high). Large funds exhibit higher tendency to reach for yield by holding illiquid bonds that suffer deteriorating returns when market liquidity drops. Further, large funds tend to provide liquidity in normal times but switch to demanding liquidity during market stress. Overall, our results reveal an important yet subtle relation between fund size and bond market fragility. 

Presentations: AFFI 2021, Australasian Finance and Banking Conference 2020, 3rd Dauphine Finance Ph.D. Workshop, FMA 2019, 18th Colloquium on Financial Markets Asset Management in Cologne, University of Mannheim, and University of Miami

Abstract: This paper shows that a low price of index funds draws investor attention to a management company, and investors' subsequent incomplete search within funds in the management company raises the flows of actively managed funds in the same management company by 10%. These spillover effects are more salient among retail investors and among share classes with direct distribution channels. At the management company level, offering low-expense index funds positively influences aggregated flows. Management companies strategically increase the expense ratios of actively managed funds after introducing low-expense index funds. 

*Presented by coauthors

Ad Hoc Referees and Conference Discussions

Contemporary Accounting Research, Management Science, Journal of Banking and Finance, Finance Research Letter, Corporate Governance: An International Review, Economic Bulletin (2), European Financial Management, International Review of Financial Analysis, Management International Review, Business Research, Journal of Multinational Financial Management, and Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research

FARS 2023, Hawaii Accounting Research Conference 2023, FMA 2023 committee member


MIT Asia Conference 2023, Eastern Finance Conference 2021, BFGA 2020, Australian Finance and Banking Conference 2020, FMA 2020, SGF 2019, FMA 2019, and FMA European Conference 2018

Teaching