On June 18, 2025, at 14:30 pm, the 47th Forum on Digital Technology and Economic Finance Frontiers was successfully held. The theme of the lecture was "Whose Attention Matters? Evidence from the Return Predictability Between Economically Linked Firms", and the guest speaker was Assistant Professor Xinyao Zhou from Ontario Tech University. The lecture was chaired by Dr. Xiaotuo Qiao from the Finance School and the Innovation and  Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance. More than 30 students attended the lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, Assistant Professor Xinyao Zhou briefly introduced relevant information of Dr. Xiaotuo Qiao to the participants and expressed his sincere gratitude for his availability to give a lecture at our college despite his busy schedule.

Assistant Professor Xinyao Zhou, based on the theory of limited attention cognitive resources, compared the differences between traditional asset pricing models and the behavioral finance perspective. He further pointed out that this study explores the impact of different types of investors' attention on the return predictability between customer-supplier firms and analyzes the role of retail investors' attention in information diffusion.

Next, Assistant Professor Xinyao Zhou systematically explained the research design and empirical findings. He compared and analyzed indicators such as the Google Trends retail Search Volume Index (SVI), Bloomberg institutional reading index, and mutual fund co-holding ratio. Based on customer-supplier pairing data from 2004 to 2017, he verified the core hypotheses through long/short trading strategies and Fama-Macbeth regression models.

Subsequently, Assistant Professor Xinyao Zhou discussed the dual implications of the research conclusions for financial market practices: On the one hand, the active participation of retail investors can enhance market efficiency through information mining and correct pricing deviations in small-cap stocks; on the other hand, institutional investors may neglect pricing opportunities among economically linked firms due to limited arbitrage profits, making retail attention a key driver of information diffusion in small-cap stocks. This finding provides a new direction for modeling investor behavior and optimizing asset pricing models in the digital age.

Finally, faculty and students on site conducted in-depth exchanges on issues such as the cross-market applicability of institutional attention indicators and the timeliness of local investors' information advantages. The attendees expressed that they had benefited greatly. Hereby, this lecture came to a successful conclusion.

Speaker Introduction

Xinyao (Joseph) Zhou is an Assistant Professor of Finance (Tenure Track) at Ontario Tech University, specializing in empirical asset pricing, behavioral finance, and financial econometrics. He holds a Ph.D. from York University and has published in Management Science and the Journal of Forecasting. With industry experience at Unilever (China), he has secured research grants and received academic awards like the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. His current work explores investor attention, social interaction, and market dynamics. 

Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance introduction

Recent years have witnessed a dramatic acceleration in a digital revolution in economic sectors and a rapid adoption of the new generation of information technologies, such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, big data, etc. These technologies effectively set off the digital economy. It has become a key driving force in creating global economic growth, improving the modernization level of governance capabilities, and promoting high-quality economic development in China. In particular, digital finance is the most important part of the digital economy. To explore the development direction of the cross-integration of digital technology and finance, the Innovation and Talent Base for Digital Technology and Finance is hosting the “Frontier Forum for Digital Technology and Finance”, in collaboration with the School of Finance, Wenlan School of Business, Economics School, School of Information and Safety Engineering, School of Statistics and Mathematics, School of Public Finance and Taxation of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law (ZUEL). This lecture series will invite the well-known scholars at home and abroad in digital technology, digital economy, digital finance, and other related fields as guest speakers, providing an open and cutting-edge academic exchange platform for interdisciplinary research on digital technology and finance.