A delegation from the Shanghai Advanced Institute of Finance (SAIF) at Shanghai Jiao Tong University attended the 2026 Allied Social Science Associations (ASSA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia from January 3rd to 5th. Faculty members and doctoral students presented research, chaired sessions, and hosted a reception through the American Finance Association (AFA), advancing the institute's engagement with the international finance community.
Professor Jun Pan, SAIF Chair Professor of Finance, chaired the "Options and Derivatives" session organized by the AFA. She presented research co-authored with doctoral student Qing Peng, titled "The Pre-FOMC Drift and the Secular Decline in Long-Term Interest Rates," in the "Fixed Income" session and served as discussant for the "Return Dynamics, Volatility, Tail Risk" session.
Assistant Professor Chen Chen presented "The Network Foundations of Credit Counterparty Risk: Theory and Evidence" ，co-authored with Jonathan Brogaard, in the "Options and Derivatives" session.
Assistant Professor Yu Li's paper "Intangible Capital Around the World" , written with Frederico Belo, Juliana Salomao, and Maria Ana Vitorino, was selected for the "Modern International Finance: Technology, Intangibles and the Digital Economy" session. Assistant Professor Qiushi Huang's paper "Data as a Networked Asset" , co-authored with Bo Bian, Ye Li, and Huan Tang, appeared in the "New Topics in Corporate Investment" session. Assistant Professor Yiyao Wang presented "BigTech-Bank Collaborations in the Lending Market", co-authored with Ben Charoenwong, in the American Economic Association's "AI and Automation" session.
SAIF doctoral students demonstrated the strength of the institute's research training. In the 2026 AFA PhD Student Poster Session, "Top Government Meetings in China" by Qing Peng and Professor Jun Pan, and "Memory and Generative AI" by Xingjian Zheng were both selected. Papers by SAIF Chair Professor and Deputy Dean Xiaoyun Yu—"The Green Value of BigTech Credit" (with Dan Su, Peng Wang, and Xinyi Wang) and "When Does Ownership Matter? Evidence from China" (with Xintong Li and Tao Shen)—also featured in the poster session.
Doctoral student Xingjian Zheng presented "Memory and Generative AI" in the AEA's "Artificial Intelligence" Lightning Round Session, while his co-authored paper "AI as Decision-Maker: Risk Preferences of LLMs" was featured in The Econometric Society's "Advances in Behavioral Economics" session.
On January 3rd, SAIF hosted a reception for nearly 200 scholars and junior faculty candidates. Deputy Deans Hong Yan, Yongxiang Wang, and Xiaoyun Yu, along with Professor Jun Pan, Huifu Chair Professor Chun Chang, Professor of Practice Xianglin Li, and Assistant Professors Chen Chen and Yu Li, engaged attendees in discussions on finance research and collaboration opportunities.
The previous day, Professor Jun Pan served as a mentor in the 2026 AFA Junior Faculty Mentoring Program, co-organized by the AFA and AFFECT (The Academic Female Finance Committee). She joined 13 senior scholars in providing guidance to early-career academics through research-focused workshops and mentor-led discussions.
The ASSA Annual Meeting, co-hosted by 64 academic societies including the AFA and AEA, serves as a premier platform for scholarly exchange in economics and finance. SAIF has participated in the conference and hosted receptions for 15 consecutive years.
Established by the Shanghai Municipal People's Government in partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, SAIF maintains a distinguished faculty of over 80 professors. As of December 2025, SAIF faculty have published 61 papers in the top three finance journals—Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, and Review of Financial Studies.
