Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Jing-Chi Chen

Date

2025

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

Business Administration

Committee Chair

Pankaj Jain

Committee Chair

Velma Zahirovic-Herbert

Committee Member

Konstantin Sokolov

Committee Member

Sabatino Silveri

Abstract

This dissertation consists of three essays on Forward-Looking Statements (FLS), Social Media Collaboration, and Climate Talents. The first essay examines how FLS impact investor trading behavior and market liquidity. We find that FLS are associated with reductions in investor trading costs, largely driven by lower market-maker inventory costs. FLS also associate with increased market depth on both sides of the bid-ask spread and greater retail and institutional trading activity, with retail investors being more responsive. Cross-sectional tests show these associations are stronger during market downturns and when earnings guidance is absent. Results are robust to instrumental variable regressions using managerial ability as an instrument. Overall, our findings suggest FLS reduce trading frictions by lowering inventory costs, enhancing market-maker competition via increased depth, and boosting investor trading activity, particularly from retail investors. The second essay explores short sellers’ responses to retail trading activity, highlighting the role of social media in empowering and informing retail traders, traditionally seen as noise traders. Short selling increases with retail buying when retail order imbalance (ROIB) is in the first decile, reflecting short sellers’ ability to target less informed traders. However, short selling decreases as retail buying rises in the tenth decile (intense buying), with the reduction especially strong for MEME stocks at their peak social media activity. The third essay investigates how climate-related commitments at the state and firm levels influence corporate hiring practices. Climate change is one of the most critical global challenges, yet research has paid little attention to the climate talents essential to meeting it. We find that commitments to combat climate change at both the state government and firm levels are associated with increased corporate job posting of climate talents. We also document that such investment in climate talents is associated with reduced Scope 1 carbon emissions. These findings demonstrate that climate commitments drive human capital investment in climate talent, which in turn contributes to improved corporate climate performance.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest.

Notes

Open Access

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