Junhao Liu

Junhao Liu

Ph.D. Candidate in Accounting at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto.

Research

Job Market Paper

1. Website Cookies and Voluntary Disclosure (R&R at Journal of Accounting and Economics)

Abstract: Using detailed website cookie information obtained from U.S. firms’ websites in real time, I investigate how corporate data accumulation and utilization affect voluntary disclosure decisions. Cookies infuse first-hand, granular, and real-time data into managers’ information sets and have the potential to enrich internal information about customers and sales operations. I show that the number of cookies is positively related to the frequency and the likelihood of issuing management sales forecasts. Using FinBERT-based measures, I find that the usage of cookies is also associated with a larger percentage of qualitative disclosure regarding customers, marketing, and products in 10-K filings. Next, I provide evidence that cookie-collected data are more useful if the collected data are of stronger relevance for disclosure and of larger volume. Additional analyses indicate that data analytic technology assists firms in better translating cookie-collected data into external disclosure, while data privacy protection regimes impair the usefulness of cookie-collected data. Using the California Consumer Privacy Act as a quasi-natural experiment, I provide additional evidence for the causal relation between cookies and voluntary disclosure. Overall, the paper sheds light on the value of corporate data assets in disclosure decisions and speaks to the effects of data analytic technology as well as the potential impacts of data privacy regulations.

  • Presented at the Rotman School of Management, the University of British Columbia, 2023 Emerging Scholars in Accounting Conference

Publication

2. Does Stock Liquidity Shape Voluntary Disclosure? Evidence from the SEC Tick Size Pilot Program (with Ole-Kristian Hope), Review of Accounting Studies (2023)

  • Presented at 2021 FARS, 2021 AAA Annual Meeting, 2021 CAAA Annual Meeting
  • Adapted from first-year summer paper at the Rotman School of Management
  • Media Mention: FinReg Blog

3. Earnings Announcements in China: Overnight and Intraday Disparity (with Ole-Kristian Hope and Danqi Hu), Journal of Corporate Finance (2023)

  • Presented at 2021 AAA Annual Meeting, 2021 CAAA Annual Meeting, 2021 TADC

Working Papers

4. FOMC Meetings and Analysts’ Target-Price Forecasts (with Ole-Kristian Hope and Mingyue Zhang)

  • Presented at the Joint Ph.D. Program Consortium at HEC Montreal, 2023 AAA Annual Meeting

Work in Progress

5. The Value of Data Assets

  • Chapter 2 of the dissertation, data analysis completed

6. Disclosing Data Assets: Evidence from a Pilot Regulation (with Xingchao Gao and Hai Lu)

  • Survey distribution and data collection in progress

7. Using Cookies to Track Investors: Collecting Data from Investors and Investor Communication

(with Xijiang Su)

  • Data analysis in progress