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14 Votes

HBS

  • Cambridge, MA

About

  • Sylvan C. Coleman Professor of Financial Management
  • Financial Research Advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (2021-2023)
  • Principal Economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2017-2018)

Voting History

Finance

Sovereign Wealth Funds

Question A: Establishing a sovereign wealth fund to invest in domestic infrastructure, emerging technologies, and/or strategic sectors would bring substantial benefits to the US economy over a ten-year horizon.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Disagree
8
Disagree
6
Question B: For the US, establishing a sovereign wealth fund would be substantially better for citizens relative to reducing public debt burdens.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree
7
Disagree
6
Finance

Cryptocurrency

Question A: A bitcoin's value derives from the belief that others will want to use it, which implies that its purchasing power is likely to fluctuate over time to a degree that will limit its usefulness.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree
7
Agree
7
Question B: A substantial source of the value of unbacked decentralized private cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, arises from their convenience for use in illegal activities.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain
6
Agree
6
Question C: A properly diversified portfolio should include crypto assets.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Disagree
6
Disagree
7
Finance

Trends in Banking

Question A: The trend of consolidation in the US banking sector will lead to fewer, but more profitable, mega-banks with over $250 billion in assets dominating the market.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree
7
Agree
6
Question B: The current liquidity and capital regulations are inadequate to address run risks of banks in a digital era.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree
8
Uncertain
6
It is appropriate advice for retail investors to tilt their portfolio away from the market portfolio towards factors that have been identified in the academic literature to earn positive abnormal returns relative to the Capital Asset Pricing Model.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree
7
Uncertain
7
Question A:

Stock markets around the world have seen an increasing concentration of trades in or near the closing auction. In the US, for example, about a third of all S&P 500 stock trades are now executed in the final ten minutes of the session, up from 27% in 2021.

The increased concentration of trading in the final minutes of the trading day has a measurably detrimental effect on market quality.

Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Disagree
8
Uncertain
5
Question B: Strict indexing implemented with trading at the close to avoid tracking error creates a measurable performance drag that could be avoided with more flexible passive strategies.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain
5
Uncertain
6
Question A: Public companies that pursue social and environmental initiatives bear no measurable costs (in terms of lower profits) relative to similar companies that do not pursue such initiatives.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Disagree
8
Disagree
7
Question B: Public companies that pursue social and environmental initiatives benefit from a measurably lower cost of capital than similar companies that do not pursue such initiatives.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain
8
Uncertain
7
Question C: There are substantial social benefits when managers of public companies make choices that account for the impact of their decisions on customers, employees, and community members beyond the effects on shareholders.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree
9
Agree
7
Question A: The lower willingness of private firms to go public, combined with the increased number of publicly traded firms being taken private over the last 25 years, is measurably net negative for economic growth.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain
6
Uncertain
6
Question B: All else equal, reducing regulatory barriers (including reporting requirements such as Sarbanes Oxley 404) to public listing would substantially increase the share of publicly traded firms in the economy.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree
5
Agree
7
Question C: The lack of transparency about unlisted private firms' financial performance substantially hinders the efficiency of the allocation of capital.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree
6
Uncertain
6
Finance

Quarterly Earnings

Question A: Letting publicly traded firms report earnings annually rather than quarterly would lead their executives to place more weight on long-term issues in their investments and other decisions.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Disagree
8
Disagree
7
Question B: A switch from quarterly to annual earnings reports would, on net, benefit shareholders.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Disagree
8
Disagree
7
Question A: It seems likely that Japanese authorities intervened in the foreign exchange market recently to prop up the yen – see, for example: https://www.ft.com/content/455784ec-0465-46ee-8c73-fc5ce3e31c37. In such circumstances, intervention refers to purchases or sales of domestic or foreign currency without changing the monetary policy stance.

Large-scale intervention by public authorities in currency markets can move exchange rates substantially.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Strongly Agree
10
Uncertain
5
Question B: The effectiveness of foreign exchange interventions can last beyond one month.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree
8
Disagree
5
Comment: If the country has abundant amount of FX reserves, effectiveness of FX interventions can last for a while.
Retail investors account for a large share of global wealth, but a small share in private equity holdings. (see link: https://bain.com/insights/why-private-equity-is-targeting-individual-investors-global-private-equity-report-2023/)

A reduction in the barriers to all retail investors investing in private equity funds - notably regulatory restrictions on investor wealth/income and on liquidity - would substantially improve household welfare.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Disagree
8
Disagree
7
Regulator Probes BlackRock and Vanguard Over Huge Stakes in U.S. Banks – The WSJ reports that ‘The FDIC is scrutinizing whether the index-fund giants are sticking to passive roles when it comes to their investments in U.S. banks.’

The exemption of passive asset managers from banking rules - such as needing permission when they acquire shares above the 10% threshold - generates measurable risks to the accomplishment of the FDIC's mission.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain
5
Disagree
7
Question A: Allowing short selling of financial securities, such as stocks and government bonds, leads to prices that, on average, are closer to their fundamental values.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree
8
Agree
8
Question B: When short sellers start to establish substantial short positions in a stock, the stock is likely to have been overvalued.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Disagree
7
Agree
7
Question C: Requiring investors to disclose short positions in a stock at the equivalent threshold as they are required to do for long positions would improve the informativeness of stock prices.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Agree
6
Agree
6
With some measures of concentration by market capitalization within broad US stock market indices at an all-time high, investors seeking a well-diversified passive equity portfolio should consider alternatives to market-cap-weighted indices.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain
7
Disagree
7
Comment: relative performance of stock returns across countries is notoriously difficult to forecast, e.g., Japanese equities continued to outperform for two decades in 70s-80s.
Finance

Tesla

Tesla shareholders are likely to benefit substantially from the decision by the Delaware Court of Chancery to void Elon Musk's $56 billion remuneration package.
Vote Confidence Median Survey Vote Median Survey Confidence
Uncertain
6
Disagree
6
Comment: Tesla stock down 2% in the after hour trading following the news, which suggests that a cut in executive pay is not necessarily good news for equity holders.