Manish Jha

35 Broad St (1241); Atlanta, GA 30303 · mjha@gsu.edu

I am an Assistant Professor of Finance at Georgia State University. I hold a Ph.D. in Finance from Washington University and a Bachelor's degree in Technology from IIT Kanpur. Prior to my doctoral studies, I worked in sovereign bond research and options trading. I am deeply grateful for the support from Super30, Kendriya Vidyalaya, MPS Foundation, and Human Resource India.

Feel free to reach out to me at mjha@gsu.edu. You can also explore my Curriculum Vitae, review my research on Google Scholar and SSRN, or connect with me on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks for stopping by!

What's New? I'm organizing a conference on AI in Corporate Finance in Atlanta this April—let me know if you'd like to attend! I'll also be at the Stigler Center-CEPR Political Economy of Finance Conference in Chicago (November), AFA Meeting in San Francisco (January), Oxford (June), and Mumbai (June-July). If you’ll be around, let’s catch up!

Research

Research Interests

Corporate Governance, Financial Technology, Machine Learning, Text Analysis

Published/ Forthcoming Papers

1. Natural Disaster Effects on Popular Sentiment Toward Finance

with Hongyi Liu and Asaf Manela   JFQA, SSRN, Video | Bloomberg (pdf), Washington Post
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 2021
We use a text-based measure of popular sentiment toward finance to study how finance sentiment responds to rare historical disasters and to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Working/Revision Papers

2. Do Activists Align with Larger Mutual Funds?

SSRN, Slides, Video | Promarket
I find that activists align proxy communications with the preferences of fund families that own a larger share in targeted firms.

3. Does Finance Benefit Society? A Language Embedding Approach

with Hongyi Liu and Asaf Manela   SSRN, Slides, Video | Promarket
We measure popular sentiment toward finance using a computational linguistics approach applied to millions of books published in eight countries over hundreds of years.

4. A Shared Interest: Do Bonds Strengthen Equity Monitoring?

with Todd Gormley   NBER, SSRN | Columbia Law Blog, ECGI, Promarket
Institutional investors’ bond holdings are associated with how actively they vote and monitor their equity investments.

5. ChatGPT and Corporate Policies

with Jialin Qian, Michael Weber, and Baozhong Yang   NBER, SSRN, Video | Becker Friedman, CFO.com, Chicago Booth Review, Harvard CorpGov, OODA Loop, VoxEU
A firm-level ChatGPT investment score, based on conference calls, helps to predict future capital expenditure for up to nine quarters.
Awards: Finalist for John L. Weinberg/IRRCi Best Paper Award 2024, Second Place Dr. Richard A. Crowell Memorial Prize 2023

6. The Politicization of Social Responsibility

with Todd Gormley and Meng Wang   NBER, SSRN | Harvard CorpGov, VoxEU
Institutional investors are less likely to support shareholder proposals involving environmental and social issues for firms headquartered in Republican-led states.

7. Harnessing Generative AI for Economic Insights

with Jialin Qian, Michael Weber, and Baozhong Yang   SSRN
We use generative AI to extract managerial expectations from conference call transcripts, which effectively predict economic indicators.

Teaching

Georgia State University

FI 8092: AI and Machine Learning Applications in Finance (2025)
FI 4020: Financial Analysis and Introduction to Loan Structuring (2021-2025)

Washington University in St Louis

Teaching Assistant
Empirical Methods in Finance (PhD Level, 2019)
Advanced Corporate Finance: Financing, Mergers and Acquisitions, Valuation (2017–2021)
Asset Pricing: Investment Theory, Options & Futures (2017)

Volunteer Tutor

Each One Teach One, St. Louis Elementary School (2018)
HSBC Financial Skills Exchange Program, Bangalore (2016)

Resources

Codes
Natural Language Processing: Python codes for Latent Dirichlet Analysis (LDA), Hierarchical Dirichlet Process (HDP), and Word2Vec.
Interact with SEC Filings: work with filings from SEC's EDGAR system.
Interact with WRDS: download data from WRDS including CRSP, Compustat, ExecuComp, Linking Tables.
Maximize distance between students: code to seat students in a classroom to reduce covid spread.
Latex: code to change colors automatically in latex documents.
Stata: worked out example for mahapick, mahaselectunique.
Miscellaneous
Text Data in Finance - slides from a three hour PhD class.
Finance JM Advice - presentation for PhD students, explaining 2020 finance job market experience.
Business PhD Admissions - explains the admission process for prospective students.
Procurement Basics - basics of refinery equipment procurement.

Press

Featured Working Papers - Politicization of Social Responsibility
NBER, October 4, 2024 [PDF]
ChatGPT Bests Wall Street in Predicting Corporate Spending
AI Street, October 3, 2024 [PDF]
The politicisation of social responsibility
Centre for Economic Policy Research VoxEU, September 30, 2024 [PDF]
LLMs can measure and identify corporate policies
Chicago Booth Review Fall 2024 Magazine, September 21, 2024 [PDF]
The Politicization of Social Responsibility
Harvard Corporate Governance Forum, September 4, 2024 [PDF]
Featured Working Papers - Spillovers from Bond Holdings
NBER, October 4, 2024 [PDF]
Selection Algos, Better Deals, and a Shared Interest
The Investment Ecosystem, June 24, 2024 [PDF]
AI Can Discover Corporate Policy Changes
Chicago Booth Review, May 8, 2024 [PDF]
A ChatGPT Use Case for the Board of Directors
OODA Loop, March 13, 2024 [PDF]
AI in Banking and Finance
Law and Technology Resources for Legal Professionals, February 29, 2024 [PDF]
22nd Annual Dr. RA Crowell Memorial Prize
AI Journal, Business Wire, PanAgora, Yahoo Singapore, February 27, 2024 [PDF]
Generative AI in Finance
Journal of Banking & Finance Call for Papers, 23 January, 2024 [PDF]
ChatGPT and corporate policies
Centre for Economic Policy Research VoxEU, August 11, 2023 [PDF]
ChatGPT Finds Capex Plans in Earnings Calls
CFO.com, August 11, 2023 [PDF]
ChatGPT and Corporate Policies
Becker Friedman Institute, August 10, 2023 [PDF]
ChatGPT and Corporate Policies
Harvard Corporate Governance Forum, August 9, 2023 [PDF]
Bonds Improve Institutional Investors’ Equity Monitoring
Chicago Booth Promarket, May 10, 2023 [PDF]
Do Bonds Affect Equity Monitoring?
Columbia Law School Blog, April 12, 2023 [PDF]
Barking Up the Right Tree: How Shareholder Activists Raise Issues to Placate Large Mutual Funds
Chicago Booth Promarket, December 16, 2020 [PDF]
Can the Finance Industry Be Trusted This Time?
Bloomberg Opinion, Washington Post, August 10, 2020 [PDF]
Do People Think Finance Benefits Society?
Chicago Booth Promarket, July 28, 2020 [PDF]

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