About Me

I am Mengjie Xu, a Job Market Candidate at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. My research centers on how information system design shapes strategic interactions among market participants and the associated market outcomes. Focusing on discovering welfare-improving information system designs and seeking ways to enhance existing ones when they fall short, I am dedicated to conducting research that has real-world relevance and can be of practical use in improving market dynamics.

Curriculum Vitae

My Curriculum Vitae is available at this link.

Research Interests

Information economics, corporate transparency, and market micro-structure

Working Papers

Does Disclosure of Investors' Information Acquisition Footprints Improve Market Transparency?
(Job Market Paper, single-authored)

By democratizing sophisticated investors' private information to retail investors, the disclosure of investors' information acquisition footprints can bridge the information gap between the two and facilitate more information to be incorporated into stock prices.
That does not necessarily discourage the sophisticated investors' information discovery incentives because they can cultivate early peek advantage by trading against the later-arrived retail investors
Overall, this study suggests that disclosing investors' information acquisition footprints can effectively and sustainably promote market transparency.

Preferential Information Dissemination and Market Efficiency
(with Frank Ecker, Frankfurt School of Finance & Management)

Two newswires' information dissemination practice gave advantageous access to high-frequency traders and dampened other participants' information acquisition incentives.
Regulatory intervention exogenously decreased this advantage, leading to more information acquisition in firm fundamentals by institutional investors and improved price informativeness.

Alternative Data and Earnings Management
(single-authored)

Pre-earnings-announcement tweets about firms significantly predict forthcoming earnings.
Institutional investors' exogenous increase in exploiting alternative data (inter-quarter tweets analysis) helps restrain managers' earnings management behavior and improve earnings quality.

Teaching Experience

Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
Financial Accounting (Tutor, B.Sc. core course)
Accounting and Capital Markets (Teaching Assistant, B.Sc. core course)
Managerial Accounting (Teaching Assistant, B.Sc. core course)
Foundations of Finance (Teaching Assistant, M.Sc. core course)
Corporate Valuation (Teaching Assistant, M.Sc. core course)

Presentations

PhD Brown Bag Seminar at Frankfurt School, Germany
Brown Bag Seminar at LMU Munich, Germany
TRR 266 Accounting for Transparency Annual Conference, Germany
Brown Bag seminar at University of Colorado Boulder, U.S.

Education

Frankfurt School of Finance & Management                                Frankfurt, Germany
Ph.D. in Accounting                                                                           2021 - exp. 2024
M.Sc. in Business Research & Analytics                                           2019 - 2021

University of Colorado Boulder                                                      Boulder, U.S.
Visiting Ph.D. Student                                                                        2023.02 - 2023.06

Sun-Yat Sen University                                                                    Guangzhou, China
Completed Coursework of Ph.D. in Finance                                      2017 - 2019

Southwestern University of Finance and Economics                  Chengdu, China
B.Sc. in Accounting                                                                           2013 - 2017

Audencia Business School                                                             Nantes, France
Exchange Student in Grande École                                                   2017.02- 2017.05