[讲座嘉宾] 香港科技大学Utpal Bhattacharya教授

[主持嘉宾] 中国人民大学经济学院陆方文教授

[讲座题目] Spillovers in Prices: The Curious Case of Haunted Houses

[讲座时间] 2019年9月25日（星期三）下午2:10 – 3:40        

[讲座地点] 明德主楼729会议室

[嘉宾介绍] Utpal Bhattacharya is a professor in the Department of Finance at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He received his Bachelors in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1980; an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, in 1982; and his Ph.D. in Finance from Columbia University in 1990. He joined HKUST in 2014.

Professor Bhattacharya`s research is about the dark side of financial markets. He believes, with apologies to Thomas Jefferson, that "the price of capitalism is eternal vigilance."

Professor Bhattacharya is the Executive Editor of Financial Management, and was an Associate Editor of the Review of Financial Studies and the Journal of Financial Markets. His publications have appeared in all the top-tier finance journals (Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and the Journal of Business), top-tier accounting journals like The Accounting Review, and top-tier economics journals like the Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Law and Economics and the Journal of Monetary Economics.

[讲座内容介绍] Exploiting the unique institutional setting of Hong Kong’s real estate market, we uncover a curious ripple effect of haunted houses on the prices of nearby houses. Prices drop on average 19% for units that become haunted, 9% for units on the same floor, 6% for units in the same block, and 1% for units in the same estate. Our study makes two contributions. First, we provide an estimate of a large negative spillover on prices caused by an idiosyncratic quality shock. Second, we find that the demand shock rather than the fire sale supply shock explains most of the spillover.