Topic: Name Complexity, Cognitive Fluency, and Asset Prices

Speaker: Ning Zhu, Professor of Finance, Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF), Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Date: December 8^th (Tue.)

Time: 10:00am-11:30am

Location: Building 4, Room 102

Language: English

Abstract:

We document three interesting phenomena in Chinese stock market related to the complexity of stock tickers: Companies with more complex stock tickers are (1) held by fewer investors; (2) witness lower turnovers; and (3) experience lower post-IPO returns. Change-in-change analysis based on ticker change events generates consistent results.

Such results are strong among companies with higher level of individual investor ownership and stronger information asymmetry. Our findings confirm and extend Green and Jame (2013) and support that cognitive fluency and name recognition influence investor behavior and asset prices.

About the speaker:

Ning Zhu is the Deputy Dean, Co-director of the DBA/EMBA/EE prgrams and a Professor of Finance at Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF), a faculty fellow at the Yale University International Center for Finance, and a Special-Term Professor of Finance at University of California, Davis and at Guanghua School of Management, Peking University. Professor Zhu is an expert on behavioral finance, investments, corporate finance, and the Asian financial markets. He has published numerous articles in leading journals in the finance, economics, management and legal fields, including Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, Journal of Legal Studies, etc. Professor Zhu has also written or co-authored several books, which are well-cited by financial industry.