Alan Huang

Office: Hagey Hall 386E

Phone: 519-888-4567 x46770

Education and certifications

PhD (University of Colorado at Boulder)

Brief biography

Alan Huang is a professor of finance and the Ernst and Young Professor at School of Accounting and Finance. Alan’s recent research combines finance and computer science. His research interests cover textual analysis related to information transmission and pricing in the financial markets and aspects of empirical asset pricing. Alan’s work has been sponsored by a number of federal grants and appeared in leading finance and accounting journals such as Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Accounting Research. Alan leads a financial data analytics research cluster at Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute, and is a former Co-Director of Computing and Financial Management Program at the University of Waterloo. Alan was an investment banking associate and a proprietary trader in China prior to his academic career,, and consults for funds and private equities. Alan holds a PhD from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and a master’s from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

Selected publications

"Language and Domain Specificity: A Chinese Financial Sentiment Dictionary", with Zijia Du, Russ Wermers, and Wenfeng Wu, forthcoming, Review of Finance
"Institutional Trading around Corporate News: Evidence from Textual Analysis'', with Hongping Tan and Russ Wermers, 2020, Review of Financial Studies 33, 4627-4675
"The Effects of Analyst-Country Institutions on Biased Research: Evidence from Target Prices'', 2019, with Mark Bradshaw and Hongping Tan, Journal of Accounting Research 57, 85-120
"Risk Mitigation by Institutional Participants in the Secondary Market: Evidence from Foreign Rule 144A Debt Market'', 2019, with Madhu Kalimipalli, Subhankar Nayak, and Latha Ramchand, Journal of Banking and Finance 99, 202-221
"Generational Asset Pricing, Equity Puzzles and Cyclicality'', 2016, with E. Hughson and C.J. Leach, Review of Economic Dynamics 22, 52–71.
"Idiosyncratic Return Volatility and the Information Quality Underlying Managerial Discretion'', with C. Chen, and R. Jha, 2012, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 47, 873-899
"Is China's P/E ratio too low? Examining the Role of Earnings Volatility'', with T. Wirjanto, 2012, Pacific-Basin Finance Journal 20, 41--61.
“Accounting Conservatism and the Temporal Trends in Current Earnings’ Ability to Predict Future Cash Flows versus Future Earnings: Evidence on the Tradeoff between Relevance and Reliability”, with Sati P. Bandyopadhyay, Changling Chen, and Ranjini Jha, 2010, Contemporary Accounting Research 27, 413-460
"The Cross Section of Cash Flow Volatility and Expected Stock Returns", 2009, Journal of Empirical Finance 16, 409-429 (Sole authored).

Working papers

Copies of working papers can be obtained from Social Science Research Network.

Federal Funding

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) (Sole Investigator), 2016-2020, $67,223.
Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Principal Investigator, with H. Tan, 2012-2016, $117,558
SSHRC , with S. Bandyopadhyay, and C. Chen (Principal Investigator), 2012-2015, $82,760
SSHRC, with T. Wirjanto (Principal Investigator), 2011-2014, $65,000
SSHRC, with S. Bandyopadhyay, R. Jha (Principal investigator), and T. Wirjanto, 2008, $66,000
SSHRC, Principal Investigator, with A. Douglas and K. Vetzal, 2006-2009, $76,000

Courses taught

Finance 1: Discrete-Time Asset Pricing (Masters of Quantitative Finance)
Investments
Managerial Finance II
Cases and Applications in Finance II
Fixed-Income Securities

Professional service

Ad-hoc Referee:
Review of Financial Studies, Management Science, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Empirical Finance, The Financial Review, International Review of Economics & Finance, Journal of Comparative Economics, International Journal of Business and Economics, Quantitative Finance, Journal of Business Ethics, Empirical Economics, Journal of Economics and Business, Managerial Finance, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Mitacs-Accelerate program, Swiss National Science Foundation