Yao Zeng

Research Field

Professor Zeng's current agenda explores the interplay between banks and various non-banks, including mutual funds, ETFs, and FinTech lending and payment service companies that all behave more like banks post-crisis, and the financial stability and macroeconomic implications.

Work experience

• The Wharton School Assistant Professor Of Finance
• University of Washington - Michael G. Foster School of Business Assistant Professor Of Finance

Education

• Harvard University Doctor of Philosophy - PhDС Economics
• Peking University Master of Arts - MA Economics
• Peking University Bachelor of Arts - BA Economics

Working Papers

• "FinTech Lending and Cashless Payments," with Pulak Ghosh and Boris Vallee
• Bank Debt versus Mutual Fund Equity in Liquidity Provision," with Yiming Ma and Kairong Xiao

Papers under Review/Revision

• “Coordination and Fragility in Liquidity Provision,” with Ming Yang

Revise and Resubmit, Review of Financial Studies

• “ETF Arbitrage under Liquidity Mismatch,” with Kevin Pan

Revise and Resubmit, Journal of Finance

• Arthur Warga Award for the Best Paper in Fixed Income, SFS Finance Cavalcade (North America)
• Finalist of the ECB Research Prize in memory of Ieke van den Burg
• Cited by U.S. SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson, Jr. in his Statement on Proposed Rules Regarding Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) on June 28, 2018

• Media Mentions: Bloomberg (Matt Levine's Money Stuff Column), ETF Stream (Interview), Bloomberg (2), NBER Digest, Financial Times (1), Financial Times (2), Washington Post, DTCC, Alpha Architect, Absolut Research

• “A Dynamic Theory of Mutual Fund Runs and Liquidity Management”

  • Revise and Resubmit, Review of Financial Studies, invited submission
  • First Prize for the Best Finance Theory Job Market Paper, Finance Theory Group
  • Trefftzs Award for the Best Student Paper, WFA
  • Cubist Systematic Strategies Ph.D. Candidate Award for Outstanding Research, WFA
  • Media Mentions: Bloomberg, WSJ, Risk.net, Money, Banking, and Financial Markets

• "Mutual Fund Liquidity Transformation and Reverse Flight to Liquidity," with Yiming Ma and Kairong Xiao

  • Accepted, Review of Financial Studies

Refereed Publications

• “Silence is Safest: Information Disclosure When the Audience's Preferences are Uncertain,” with Philip Bond
  • Journal of Financial Economics, forthcoming
  • Media Mentions: Columbia Law School Blue Sky Blog
• “Mutual Funds as Venture Capitalists? Evidence from Unicorns,” with Sergey Chernenko and Josh Lerner
  • Review of Financial Studies, 34(5): 2362-410, May 2021. Code to Download Data
  • Media Mentions: Reuters, Bloomberg (Matt Levine's Money Stuff Column), Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, Boston Globe, Citywire, MoFo Jumpstarter
• “Marketplace Lending: A New Banking Paradigm?” with Boris Vallee
  • Review of Financial Studies, 32(5): 1939-82, May 2019. Replication Code and Data
  • Media Mentions: HBS Working Knowledge, PYMTS.com
• “Financing Entrepreneurial Production: Security Design with Flexible Information Acquisition,” with Ming Yang
  • Review of Financial Studies, 32(3): 819-63, March 2019. Editor's Choice (lead article)
• “Multi-Agent Inference in Social Networks: A Finite Population Learning Approach,” with Jianqing Fan and Xin Tong
  • Journal of the American Statistical Association, 110, Theory and Methods: 149-58, April 2015.