Wang Zigan

2009.9-2015.6: Columbia University, New York, PhD in Economics (Defense committee: Patrick Bolton, Ailsa Röell, José Scheinkman, Dan J. Wang, Tri Vi Dang)

2009.9-2012.10: Columbia University, New York, Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.) in Economics

2009.9-2011.10: Columbia University, New York, Master of Arts (M.A.) in Economics

2005.9-2009.7: Bachelor of Economics, Tsinghua University, Beijing

2002.9-2005.7: National Science Experimental Class, Ministry of Education of China

Prior Employment

2015.7-2023.6: School of Business, University of Hong Kong, Assistant Professor

2014.1-2014.5: State University of New York, Adjunct Professor

2023-2024：Seminars on Advanced Topics in Finance, master, Tsinghua University

2023-2024：Research on Frontier Issues in Finance, master, Tsinghua University

2023-2024：Cryptography and Network Security, master, Tsinghua University

2017-2022：Advanced Financial Programming and Databases, master, HKU

2023-2024：Seminars on Advanced Topics in Finance, master, Tsinghua University

2023-2024：Research on Frontier Issues in Finance, master, Tsinghua University

2023-2024：Cryptography and Network Security, master, Tsinghua University

2017-2022：Advanced Financial Programming and Databases, master, HKU

2017-2022：Financial Programming and Databases, undergrad, HKU

2016-2022：Corporate Finance, undergrad, HKU

2014：Money and Banking, master and undergrad, State University of New York

2014：Financial Management, master and undergrad, State University of New York

2010：Microeconomics, master, Columbia University (TA)

2010-2015：Corporate Finance, master and undergrad, Columbia University (TA)

2011：Statistics of Sustainability Management, master, Columbia University (TA)

2011-2012：Principles of Economics, undergrad, Columbia University (TA)

2008：Principles of Economics, undergrad, Tsinghua University (TA)

Economics: applied micro, international, environmental, political, law

Finance: foreign exchange, corporate investment and cash management, bank M&As, international

Methodology: network analysis, machine learning, reinforcement learning, NLP

Research Wesbite

http://www.wangzigan.com

Peer-reviewed Publications in Economics and Finance Journals

1. “Political Connections, Financial Constraints, and Corporate Taxation” (with Ke Na; Terry Shevlin; Youan Wang)

Forthcoming, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis (ABS 4, PHBS50, ABDC A*)

2. “On the Profitability of Influential Carry Trades Strategies: Data Snooping Bias and Post-Publication Performance” (with Yan Li, Po-Hsuan Hsu and Mark P. Taylor)

Forthcoming, Journal of Empirical Finance. (ABS 3, ABDC A)

3. “The Power of the People: Labor Unions and Corporate Social Responsibility” (with Amanda Heitz and Youan Wang)

Review of Finance, 28, no. 6 (2024): 1833-1879 (ABS 4, ABDC A*)

4. “Do Share Repurchases Facilitate Movement Towards Target Capital Structure? International Evidence” (with Qie Yin and Luping Yu)

Journal of Empirical Finance, 77 (2024): 101498. (ABS 3, ABDC A)

5. “Media Sentiment and Currency Reversals” (with Ilias Filippou and Mark P. Taylor)

Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 59, no. 3 (2024): 1401-1429 (ABS 4, PHBS50, ABDC A*)

6. “The Out-of-Sample Performance of Carry Trades” (with Po-Hsuan Hsu, Yan Li, and Mark P. Taylor)

Journal of International Money and Finance, Vol. 143, May 2024, 103042. (ABS 3, ABDC A)

7. “Estimation and Inference of Treatment Effects with L2-Boosting in High-Dimensional Settings” (with Jannis Kueck, Ye Luo and Martin Spindler)

Journal of Econometrics, Vol. 234(2), June 2023, pp. 714-731. (ABS 4, PHBS50, ABDC A*)

8. “Corporate Political Connections and Favorable Environmental Regulatory Enforcement” (with Amanda Heitz and Youan Wang)

Management Science, Vol. 69(12), December 2023, pp. 7838-7859. (ABS 4*, UTD24, PHBS50, ABDC A*)

9. “The Role of Financial Constraints in Firm Investment Under Pollution Abatement Regulation” (with Tri Vi Dang and Youan Wang)

Journal of Corporate Finance, Vol. 76, October 2022, 102252. (ABS 4, ABDC A*)

10. “Currency Volatility and Global Technological Innovation” (with Po-Hsuan Hsu, Mark P. Taylor and Qi Xu)

Journal of International Economics, Vol. 137, July 2022, 103607. (ABS 4, PHBS50, ABDC A*)

11. “The Real Effects of Exchange Rate Risk on Corporate Investment: International Evidence” (with Mark P. Taylor and Qi Xu)

Journal of International Money and Finance, October 2021, Vol. 117. (ABS 3, ABDC A)

Media Coverage: Mingpao Daily (Finance, Education), Hong Kong Commercial Daily

12. “Real Effects of Share Repurchases Legalization on Corporate Behaviors” (with Qie Yin and Luping Yu)

Journal of Financial Economics, Vol. 140(1), April 2021, pp. 197-219. (ABS 4*, UTD24, PHBS50, ABDC A*)

Reprint: Harvard Law School Program on Corporate Governance

13. “Bank Networks and Acquisitions” (with Ross Levine and Chen Lin)

Management Science, Vol. 66(11), November 2020, pp. 5216-5241. (ABS 4*, UTD24, PHBS50, ABDC A*)

Media Coverage: Vox EU, HKU Bulletin

14. “Technical Trading: Is it still Beating the Foreign Exchange Market?” (with Po-Hsuan Hsu and Mark P. Taylor)

Journal of International Economics, Vol. 102, September 2016, pp. 188-208. (ABS 4, PHBS50, ABDC A*)

Peer-reviewed Publications in Top Computer Science Conferences

(CCF: China Computer Federation; * Corresponding Author)

15. Yang Li, Siqi Ping, Xiyu Chen, Xiaojian Qi, Zigan Wang, Ye Luo, Xiaowei Zhang, AgentGit: A Version Control Framework for Reliable and Scalable LLM-Powered Multi-Agent Systems  AAAI 2026 Workshop WMAC

16. Zongsheng Cao, Anran Liu, Yangfan He, Jing Li, Bo Zhang, and Zigan Wang*, ViG-RAG: Video-aware Graph Retrieval-Augmented Generation via Temporal and Semantic Hybrid Reasoning    AAAI 2026 (CCF-A)

17. Jing Li, Zigan Wang, and Jinliang Li, AdvDenoise: Fast Generation Framework of Universal and Robust Adversarial Patches Using Denoise  CVPR W 2024 (CCF-A)

18. Zongsheng Cao, Jing Li, Zigan Wang*, and Jinliang Li, DiffusionE: Reasoning on knowledge graphs via Diffusion-based Graph Neural Networks       KDD 2024 (CCF-A)

19. Yue Zhang, Jing Li, Zigan Wang, Jinming Duan, and Jinliang Li, AVS-Net: Attention-based Variable Splitting Network for P-MRI Acceleration       BIBM 2023 (CCF-B)

Book Chapter

20. An Overview of Corporate Governance, Policies and Public Listing of Chinese State-owned Enterprises Reform, in “Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility: Emerging Markets Focus”, July 2014, edited by S. Boubaker and D.K Nguyen. World Scientific Publishing

Working Papers Under Revision

21. “Bank Liquidity, Credit Supply and the Environment” (with Ross Levine, Chen Lin and Wensi Xie)

Reject & Resubmit at Review of Economics and Statistics (ABS 4, PHBS50, ABDC A*)

22. “Asymptotic Theory for IV-Based Reinforcement Learning with Potential Endogeneity” (with Jin Li, Ye Luo and Xiaowei Zhang)

Revise & Resubmit at Journal of Econometrics (ABS 4, PHBS50, ABDC A*)