Jun Chen
Assistant Professor of Finance
School of Business - Department of Finance
Renmin University of China
No.59, Zhongguancun Street, Haidian Dist.
Beijing 100872 China
Phone: +86 (010) 8250-0579
E-mail: chen.jun@rmbs.ruc.edu.cn
Research Interests
Entrepreneurial Finance, Labor and Finance, Empirical Corporate Finance
Publications
"The Role of High-Skilled Foreign Labor in Startup Performance: Evidence from Two Natural Experiments," with Shenje Hshieh and Feng Zhang, Journal of Financial Economics, 2021, Vol. 142(1), Pp. 430-452.
Winner of 2019 TCU Finance Conference Best Paper Award
"Capability Accumulation and Conglomeratization in the Information Age," with Matthew Elliott and Andrew Koh, Journal of Economic Theory, 2023, Forthcoming.
"Hiring High-Skilled Labor through Mergers and Acquisitions," with Shenje Hshieh and Feng Zhang, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2023, Forthcoming.
"Venture Capital Research in China: Data and Institutional Details," solo, Journal of Corporate Finance, 2022, Forthcoming.
Working Papers
"Venture Capital and Startup Agglomeration," with Michael Ewens, 2023, under review
Presentations: Fourteenth Annual Conference on Innovation Economics, 34th Australasian Finance and Banking Conference, 2022 FIRS Finance Conference (accepted), 2022 WFA Conference (accepted)
The paper studies venture capital's role in the geographic clustering of high-growth startups. We exploit a rule change that disproportionately impacted U.S. regions that historically lacked VC financing via a restriction of banks to invest in the asset class. A one-standard-deviation increase in VCs' exposure to the rule led to an 18% decline in fund size and a 10% decrease in the likelihood of raising a follow-on fund. Startups were not wholly cushioned: financing and valuations declined. Startups also moved out of impacted states after the rule change, likely exacerbating existing geographic disparity in entrepreneurship.
"Immigrants in Finance," with Shenje Hshieh, Melvyn Teo and Feng Zhang, 2023
Presentations: City University of Hong Kong, Singapore Management University, Southern Methodist University, the 2022 Financial Management Association Meetings in Atlanta, the 14th Annual Hedge Fund Conference in Paris, the 2023 Finance Down Under Conference in Melbourne, the 2023 Midwest Finance Association Meetings in Chicago, and the 2023 SGF Conference in Zurich
We examine the value of skilled immigrants in finance by exploiting two natural experiments. We find that hedge fund management companies that secure more H-1B visas in random lotteries deliver higher alphas, Sharpe ratios, and information ratios. Moreover, an unexpected reduction in the H-1B quota undermined the performance of hedge funds that were dependent on H-1B workers. The superior performance of funds with high H-1B visa allocations can be attributed to highly-educated, well-paid, and motivated H-1B workers with quantitative skills. H-1B workers add value by helping hedge funds overcome capacity constraints, arbitrage prominent stock anomalies, and develop distinctive investment strategies.
"The Labor Effects of R&D Tax Incentives: Evidence from VC-Backed Startups," with Shenje Hshieh, 2022, Review of Finance, revise and resubmit
Presentations: The 2021 New Zealand Finance Meeting, The 2021 AFA Annual Meeting, The 2021 Greater Bay Area Finance Conference, The 2022 MFA (accepted), Renmin University of China
We examine whether VC-backed startups respond to R&D tax incentives by attempting to scale R&D activities through employment. We exploit a provision of the PATH Act of 2015, which allows qualified small businesses to offset payroll taxes with R&D tax credits, and show that marginally eligible startups increase their demand for R&D workers more than marginally ineligible startups after the PATH Act’s enactment in 2015. Marginally eligible startups not only ramp up recruiting of workers of higher quality, but also subsequently file more patents with new inventors. Our findings reveal that tax incentives can stimulate startup R&D activities through skilled labor recruitment.
Presentations: 2021 Five Star Workshop
We study how intellectual property (IP) protection impacts local firms' innovation incentives and patenting strategies. Exploiting the staggered establishment of specialized IP courts across Chinese regions, we show that strengthening IP protection leads to higher R&D investments but lower patenting activities. Higher litigation risk from disclosing inventions seems to dominate the benefit of stronger protections gained from patenting. Consistent with this explanation, we find that firms reduce patenting mainly in technology fields where their industry rivals have previously patented. Overall, our findings suggest that enhancing IP protection encourages more innovation efforts, possibly in uncharted technology areas.
"What Role Does Angel Finance Play in the Early-stage Capital Market?" 2019
This paper focuses on angel financing, and its interaction with the venture capital (VC) market. I collect the first systematic dataset on angel financing. Using this data, I find that the angel capital market is large, and angel financing has causal impacts on VCs: initial angel investments lead VCs to re-allocate financing from early to later rounds.
Publications in Math
"A Generalized Polya Urn with Graph-based Interactions," with Michel Benaim, Itai Benjamini and Yuri Lima, Random Structures & Algorithms 46.4 (2015): 614-634.
"Vertex-reinforced Random Walk on Z with Sub-square-root Weights Is Recurrent," with Gady Kozma, Comptes Rendus Mathematique 352.6 (2014): 521-524.
"A Generalized Polya's Urn: Convergence at Linearity," with Cyrille Lucas, Electronic Communications in Probability 19 (2014), No. 67, 1-13.
"Two Particles' Repelling Random Walks on the Complete Graph," Solo Author, Electronic Journal of Probability 19 (2014), No. 113, 1-17.
"Natural `Flow' Not in the Le Jan-Raimond Framework," with Kainan Xiang, Stochastics and Dynamics Vol. 12, No. 2 (2012) 1150014.
Teaching
Renmin University of China, Beijing, China
Undergraduate Courses:
Entrepreneurial Finance. 2022 - Present.
Venture Capital. 2021 - Present.
Financial Derivatives. 2018 - 2020.
PhD Courses:
Research Topics in Corporate Finance. 2019 - Present.
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA USA
Teaching Assistant for Professor Michael Ewens: Introduction to Financial Accounting. Spring 2017 - 2018.
Teaching Assistant for Professor Richard Roll: Introduction to Finance. Fall 2016.