Speaker: Xunhua Su, Assistant Professor, Department of Finance, Norwegian School of Economics, Norway

Date: March 31, 2017

Time:2:30 pm- 4:00 pm

Location: B423 Juxian Lecture Hall, Zhixin Building, Central Campus

Sponsor:the School of Economics

Abstract:

Fast-growing star firms lead competition of their industries. We identify the rising star of an industry as the industry's fastest-growing firm in the past three years, and define the industry star index as the growth rate of the star firm minus industry average. Using this index to capture the competitive pressures of rising stars on industry peers, we show that the rise of stars significantly affects peer firms' corporate policies such as cash holdings. Specifically, firms in industries with a high (top-quartile) star index increase their cash-to-assets ratios by 0.5 percentage points more than firms in other industries. This increase of cash is equivalent to U.S. $5.5 million per year. The effect maintains after controlling for extant measures of product market competition, suggesting that the star index captures competitive forces beyond what are captured by extant measures.

Bio:

Xunhua Su is currently an assistant professor at Department of Finance, Norwegian School of Economics (NHH). He joined NHH in 2015 after working for two years at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He completed his PhD at NHH in 2012 and was a visiting scholar at Wharton Finance Institutions Center (2011-2012), Norwegian Central Bank (2011) and Swiss Finance Institute (2009-2010). Before his graduate study, Xunhua Su had been for several years a manager and earlier an engineer of China Telecom (NYSE: CHA), Shenzhen Special Economic Zone. Xunhua Su's research areas include theoretical and empirical corporate finance, banking and financial contracts. His research has been published in top-level journals including theJournal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis,Journal of Money,Credit and Banking, andFinancial Management. His papers have been presented at the Western Finance Association Annual Conference (2013, 2014) and won the Yihong Xia Best Paper Award (2012 CICF).

For more information, please visit:

http://www.view.sdu.edu.cn/new/2017/0327/89213.html

Edited by: Chen Shangmin