11/05/2026
By Sang Su Ha

The Department of Finance in the Manning School of Business invites you to SangSu Ha’s doctoral dissertation proposal defense, titled “The Production and Diffusion of Corporate Information: Essays on Electoral Salience, Analyst Networks, and Market Outcomes.”

Details

  • Date: Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2026
  • Time: 10 – 11:30 a.m.
  • Location: ETIC 245

Committee members

  • Hieu Phan (Chair), Ph.D., Department of Finance, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell
  • Steven Freund, Ph.D., Department of Finance, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell
  • Tunde Kovacs, Ph.D., Department of Finance, Manning School of Business, UMass Lowell
  • Robert Kim, Ph.D., Department of Accounting and Finance, UMass Boston

Abstract

Corporate information is shaped by firms’ reporting decisions, their political environment, and the analysts who gather and interpret information. This dissertation examines how presidential electoral salience and analyst networks relate to the production and diffusion of corporate information and its consequences for financial markets.

The first essay examines corporate disclosure and audit pricing among firms headquartered in presidential battleground states. These firms provide more detailed financial statement information, receive greater attention, and pay lower audit fees. The fee difference is not explained by their more detailed disclosure. Additional evidence is consistent with lower expected formal oversight contributing to audit pricing, although the fee evidence appears to reflect persistent differences across firms. The findings suggest that greater political visibility can coincide with greater demand for corporate information and lower expected formal oversight.

The second essay examines whether analysts’ network positions are associated with firms’ information environments beyond analyst coverage. It focuses on eigenvector centrality, which gives greater weight to connections with peers who are themselves more central. Controlling for analyst coverage, firms followed by more central analysts exhibit lower subsequent stock return synchronicity, meaning their returns move less closely with market and industry returns. These firms also have lower forecast uncertainty and smaller forecast errors. Analysts with higher eigenvector centrality respond more strongly to same-industry earnings news from firms covered by analysts two steps away, excluding firms covered by the focal analyst or any direct neighbor. These findings are consistent with broader network connections supporting firm-specific analysis.

The third essay examines whether analyst network centrality is associated with future stock price crash risk, conditional on analyst coverage. Firms followed by more central analysts exhibit lower subsequent crash risk. Before bad-news earnings announcements, higher eigenvector centrality is associated with more prevalent and earlier downward forecast revisions relative to upward revisions. This evidence is consistent with central analysts helping bring unfavorable information to light before it accumulates. Together, the essays highlight how political environments and information intermediaries are associated with differences in corporate transparency, information diffusion, and market outcomes.