1. Mingfa Ding
https://sites.google.com/site/mingfa83/
PERSONAL DETAILS
Date of birth: 20-03-1983 Address: P.O. Box 7082, 220 07, Lund, Sweden
Sex: Male Phone: +46(0)462227909
Nationality: Swedish E-mail: Mingfa.Ding@nek.lu.se
CURRENT POSITION
2010-2015 Ph.D. candidate in Economics (Specializing in Financial Economics), School of Economics and Management, Lund University, Sweden
AREAS OF INTERESTS
Financial Market, Corporate Governance, Market Microstructure, Chinese Economy, Institutional Economics and Asset Pricing
EDUCATION
2004-2008 BSc in Economics (specializing in Finance), Peking University, China
Thesis title: "The development of China's Microfinance and its effect on economic growth"
2008-2010 MSc in Economics (specializing in Econometrics), Stockholm University, Sweden
Thesis title: "Inflation volatility and political instability"
WORKING PAPER
2014 “Politically Connected Firms and Firm Liquidity: Political Network, Hierarchy and Intervention”
(Job Market Paper)
2014 “Corporate Ownership Structure, Types of Blockholders and Firm Liquidity: Evidence from China”
2013 “Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors and Firm Liquidity in the Chinese Stock Market”
Coauthor: Birger Nilsson (Lund University) and Sandy Suardi (La Trobe Univerisity)
RESEARCH IN PROGRESS
Political Factor and Asset Pricing: Evidence from China
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2012-2014 Teaching Assistant for Time Series Analysis at Master level
Instructor in computer labs
2012-2014 Teaching Assistant for Advanced Econometrics at Master level
Lecturer in linear algebra and statistics for econometrics, and instructor in computer labs

2. SELECTED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2012-05 The 14th annual SNEE (The Swedish Network for European Studies) conference in Mölle, Sweden
2013-06 The 2nd annual Conference on Global Financial Stability, Sydney, Australia
2013-10 The Swedish National PhD Workshop in Finance, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden
2013-12 The World Finance & Bank Symposium, Beijing, China
2014-05 The Nordic PhD Workshop in Finance, Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden
2014-07 The International Conference on Business and Information, Osaka, Japan
RESEARCH GRANTS AND AWARDS
2004 The 1st scholarship for Miyoshi Student Award of the Year 2004 in Peking University
2005 The 1st scholarship for Miyoshi Student Award of the Year 2005 in Peking University
2006 The 2nd scholarship for Social Work Award Year 2006 in Peking University
2008 The Awards for the "Excellent Graduate" in Peking University
2013 Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser (Research foundations)
2014 Handelsbankens forskningsstiftelser (Research foundations)
REFEREE FOR SCIENTIFIC JOURNALS
2014-10 Singapore Economic Review
ACADEMIC SERVICES AND PARTICIPATION IN RESEARCH PROJECT
2011-04 Conference organizing assistant, Arne Ryde Workshop in Financial Economics, Lund, Sweden
2011-12 Conference organizing assistant, 1st Knut Wicksell Conference in Finance, Lund, Sweden
2013-2014 Participation in the project "Liquidity, Asset Pricing, and Portfolio Choice", led by senior professor Björn
Hansson and financed by Handelsbankens
OTHERS
Computer skills: Matlab, Stata, Eviews, R, C language, Latex
Language: English (fluent), Swedish (intermediate), Chinese (native)
REFERENCE
Birger Nilsson, Associate Professor (Main Advisor), Department of Economics, Lund University, Sweden Email: Birger.Nilsson@nek.lu.se
Björn Hansson, Senior Professor (Assistant Advisor), Department of Economics, Lund University, Sweden Email: Bjorn.Hansson@nek.lu.se
Sandy Suardi, Associate Professor, School of Economics, La Trobe University, Australia
Email: S.Suardi@latrobe.edu.au

3. Politically Connected Firms and Firm Liquidity:
Political Network, Hierarchy and Intervention
(Job Market Paper)
I measure the value of political connection through their liquidity effect on privately controlled firms and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China’s stock market over the period of 2003 to 2012. State participation among the top ten shareholders is used as a criterion for classifying firm "politically connected". Using this criterion, I find that politically connected firms are associated with higher liquidity, which is manifested by tighter spreads, higher quoted depths, greater trading activity, lower adverse selection spread components and a smaller price impact. I further examine the effects of three dimensions political connections on liquidity: political network, hierarchy and intervention. First, I determine that a greater political network results in greater liquidity for both state-owned and privately controlled firms. Second, SOEs that are centrally controlled possess higher liquidity than those that are locally controlled. Third, greater political intervention arising from direct government control impedes the positive impact of political connection on liquidity.
Corporate Ownership Structure, Types of Blockholders and Firm Liquidity: Evidence from China
This paper uses the perfect corporate institutional setting in China’s stock market to investigate how a firm’s corporate ownership structure is associated with the effect of block on liquidity. Using 2071 Chinese listed firms over the period of 2002 to 2012, I find that with greater block ownership have lower liquidity, which is indicated by wider effective and quoted spreads, a higher price impact. However, after one controls for a firm’s non-tradable-shares ownership, the negative relationship between block ownership and liquidity fails to hold in China. This finding suggests that non-tradable shares held by blockholders not only dampen trading activity but also worsen the informational efficiency in market, which can explain the adverse effect of block ownership on liquidity. There is also evidence that institutional environment under which block shareholders operate largely influences the impact of ownership on liquidity.

4. Qualified Foreign Institutional Investors and Firm Liquidity in the Chinese Stock Market
(with Birger Nilsson and Sandy Suardi)
The Chinese government has implemented the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) system to promote stock market liquidity through the participation of foreign institutional investors. This paper is the first to explicitly identify the channels through which foreign institutional investors influence liquidity on the Chinese stock markets. First, we determine that market participation by QFIIs promotes liquidity both for state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and non-SOEs. Second, QFIIs improve liquidity through both the real friction and the informational channels. Third, as implied by these two results, foreign institutions are not informationally disadvantaged when investing in SOEs.