A paper by IBSS Department of Finance Professor Xuezhong (Tony) He was recently accepted by the prestigious Journal of Finance, one of the top finance journals worldwide.
Professor He’s research aimed to raise awareness of the importance of non-standard errors in influencing research results in his field. In statistics, samples are drawn from a population in a data-generating process (DGP). Standard errors measure the uncertainty in estimates of population parameters. Estimates conditional on the model may differ between researchers as they choose different research paths. This additional variation from using various research methods on the same data is known as non-standard error. Within quantitative research papers in finance the lower the rate of non-standard errors, the higher the quality of the peer-rated paper.
The article is the first journal publication in finance that adds peer feedback to experiments on the dispersion of Non-Standard Errors based on data estimates. 164 research teams (RTs) and 34 peer evaluators (PEs) participated, with each PE evaluating about ten papers. The team examined the same data by testing the same hypotheses to obtain the final magnitude of the non-standard errors. The challenge of this study was that the total human resources for the research span almost a single academic career: 164 × 2 months + 34 × 2 days ≈ 27 years.
Professor He was primarily responsible for evaluating the experimental reports of different teams during the study, intending to effectively eliminate human estimation errors. He provided feedback to the teams on the possible existence or omission of estimates in their reports so that they could be retested. Ultimately, this resulted in a reduction of non-standard errors. The results of this research showed that at the statistical level, the ratio of standard errors to non-standard errors is 1:1.6, proving that non-standard errors are a significant problem to be resolved. The study also found that the participating teams underestimated the effect of non-standard errors.
Founded in 1946, the Journal of Finance (JF) is the official academic journal of the American Finance Association and publishes cutting-edge research in all major areas of finance. With a 2021 Journal Citation Reports impact factor of 7.870, it is recognised internationally as both a top business and finance journal and the most influential academic journal in finance. The journal is also a member of the UTD24 and FT50 journal groups.
Professor He is an internationally recognized expert in asset pricing, financial market modeling, market microstructure, and financial economics. Regarding research impact, RePEc (Research Papers in Economics) Ranking puts Tony in the Top 3% in Asia and China. He has published one book, 15 chapters, and more than 50 journal papers. His publications have been highly cited (more than 3,400 times in Scopus and 6,000 times in Google Scholar). Professor He joined the Department of Finance as a Professor in 2022. He received his PhD in Finance in 2001 from UTS and PhD in Applied Mathematics in 1995 from Flinders University in Australia, the two fundamental disciplines underpinning his teaching and research areas. His teaching included asset pricing, portfolio theory, investment, international finance, and derivatives. Before joining XJTLU IBSS, Professor He was a Professor of Finance at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) from 2010 to 2021. He worked at the University of Sydney and UTS as a Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Associate Professor.
Over the past year, IBSS scholars have published a number of papers in leading international academic journals at the UTD-24, FT-50, and ABS 4/4* levels, including Management Science, Journal of Finance, Journal of Operations Management, Information System Research, Production and Operations Management, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Research Policy, Journal of World Business, Journal of Travel Research, Journal of Retailing, Human Resource Management, etc., and have been awarded a number of important research projects by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Humanities and Social Science Foundation of the Ministry of Education. The business school is well on its way to becoming a top-quality research-oriented business school.
