Jialan Wang

PhD Candidate in Financial Economics, Finance Group
MIT Sloan School of Management

60 Wadsworth St Apt 7E
Cambridge, MA  02142
Phone: (626) 278-3459 (cell)

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About Me

I am a doctoral student in financial economics at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and I am currently on the job market. I received a bachelor of science in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology in 2003. I enjoy cooking and running by the Charles River.

Research & Teaching fields

Primary Field: Corporate Finance
Secondary Fields: Labor Economics, Organizational Economics, Entrepreneurship

Publications

Superstar Extinction: The Effect of Coauthor Death on Research Productivity in the Academic Life Sciences. Quarterly Journal of Economics, Forthcoming. (with Pierre Azoulay and Joshua Graff-Zivin)

Secrets of the Academy: The Drivers of University Endowment Success. Journal of Economic Perspectives 22, Summer 2008. (with Joshua Lerner and Antoinette Schoar)

Evolution of Digital Organisms at High Mutation Rates Leads to Survival of the Flattest. Nature, July 2001. (with C. Wilke, C. Ofria, R. E. Lenski, and C. Adami)

Research Papers

The Role of Human Capital in Corporate Bankruptcy (Job market paper)
Using a sample of 1,493 public firms that filed for Chapter 11 between 1980 and 2003, I examine how the process of corporate bankruptcy varies by human capital intensity. Prior to entering bankruptcy, human-capital-intensive firms are less likely to undertake typical restructuring activities that reduce the scale of assets and liabilities. Instead, human-capital-intensive firms grow more aggressively compared with low-human-capital firms, financing their growth through increased leverage. Their increased borrowing may help allow human-capital-intensive firms to postpone bankruptcy after initial cashflow shortfalls, but may also make them vulnerable to credit tightening after shocks to fundamentals. Human-capital-intensive firms are more likely to be liquidated within bankruptcy, yet conditional upon emergence they experience better postbankruptcy performance. These results suggest that contrary to concerns that Chapter 11 allows too many inefficient firms to emerge, human-capital-intensive firms are less likely to suffer from over-continuation in bankruptcy.

Research in Progress

Monetary Incentives and Creative Performance
(with Drazen Prelec)
We investigate the effect of flat versus pay-for-performance incentive contracts on creative output in an experimental setting.

Teaching Assistantships

Fellowships and Awards

Invited Presentations