• 2025
• Working Paper

We document foreign biases in AI-generated financial predictions: ChatGPT (US-based) is systematically more optimistic about Chinese firms than DeepSeek (China-based), predicting higher end-of-year stock prices and generating more buy recommendations. This AI-specific phenomenon contradicts the traditional home bias in which investors favor domestic assets. We trace this bias to differential information access: ChatGPT's optimism increases when US media coverage of Chinese firms' negative news is scarce relative to Chinese media. Supporting this mechanism, placebo tests with synthetic Chinese firms without such asymmetries show no prediction gap between models. Crucially, providing ChatGPT with Chinese news through prompts-which cannot alter model weights-completely eliminates the prediction gap, demonstrating that the bias stems from missing training data. Our findings imply that the parallel development of LLMs in different countries can create divergent financial forecasts, potentially amplifying rather than reducing cross-border information asymmetries as these tools shape investment decisions globally.

• September 2025
• Article

We investigate the impact of observing peers’ information acquisition on financial analysts’ allocation of attention. Using the timely disclosure mandate by the Shenzhen Stock Exchange as a setting, we find that, shortly after analysts observe that a firm has been visited by peer analysts, they reduce short-term attention to that firm, as indicated by a reduced tendency to conduct follow-up visits. Nonvisiting analysts who do not conduct follow-up visits are more likely to discontinue coverage of the visited firm. These findings are consistent with the conjecture that the timely disclosure reveals the first-mover advantage of visiting analysts, leading nonvisiting ones to reallocate their limited attention. We also find that, compared to the pre-mandate period, the information environments of visited firms deteriorate immediately after an analyst’s visit but not over the longer term. Further evidence suggests that the timely disclosure mandate has positive externalities in the form of increased immediate attention to and improved short-term information environments of unvisited peer firms.

• August 2025
• Case

Apollo Global Management—long known for opportunistic private-equity deals—has morphed into an insurance-anchored credit powerhouse after fully acquiring life-annuity issuer Athene. CEO Marc Rowan’s bold bet is that an asset-heavy balance sheet, fueled by Athene’s hundreds of billions of long-duration liabilities, can deliver superior, repeatable returns and propel assets under management to $1.5 trillion within five years. Yet public markets award Apollo a multiple on its earnings that is far below asset-light peers such as Blackstone, highlighting important trade-offs. This case lets class participants grapple with seven inter-locking questions: Why is Apollo’s valuation multiple lower—and is the market right? What synergies and frictions arise when an alternative asset manager owns an insurer? Is an asset-heavy strategy visionary or misguided? How should Apollo balance the often-conflicting incentives of policyholders, fund LPs, and shareholders? And, ultimately, is Rowan’s integrated model the best route to double AUM? Instructors can guide participants to test hypotheses about business-model innovation, business strategy, cost of capital, vertical integration, and risk management in today’s rapidly evolving private-markets ecosystem.