Title:Unpacking Social Exposure
Speaker:ZHANG Ruishen, Assistant Professor of the University of Hong Kong
Time: 14:00 p.m., June 19, 2025
Venue:Room 105, Building No.12, Wushan Campus
Introduction to the Speaker:
Professor Zhang joined the University of Hong Kong in 2024 as an Assistant Professor of Accounting. From 2020 to 2024, Professor Zhang served as an Associate Professor of Accounting at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. He holds a Ph.D. in Accounting from the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management. His research interests include climate finance, information production in capital markets, financial accounting, and corporate governance. Professor Zhang has extensive experience in addressing important economic issues relevant to both academia and practice, leveraging unstructured data and advancements in text analysis and large language models. His research findings have been published in journals such as the Journal of Finance and Management Science.
Abstract:
We develop a topic-based measure of firm-level social exposure using large language models applied to earnings conference calls. Our measure disaggregates the social dimension into five economically interpretable categories: Employee Welfare, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), Stakeholder Outreach, Ethical Commitments and Crisis Response. The measure captures meaningful variation in firms’ social positioning and predicts real-world social controversies. We link topic-specific exposure to labor, productivity, and ESG rating outcomes. DEI and ethical discourse are associated with stronger hiring, higher total factor productivity, and improved social ratings, while crisis-related exposure signals image damages and operational inefficiencies. Comparing within-firm and cross-sectional estimates reveals that dynamic managerial responses differ substantially from persistent strategic positioning. Our topic-based framework enhances ESG measurement by unpacking the complex “S” into actionable dimensions, enabling researchers and practitioners to trace how evolving social preferences influence economic resource allocation.