Xing Huang

Xing Huang

Assistant Professor at Olin Business School

The dramatic demographic shifts in the racial composition of the U.S. population over recent decades have far reaching economic implications. In this study, Professor Huang plans to address one dimension of these implications. She will analyze the racial composition of management teams of U.S.-listed mutual funds and how it interacts with the racial diversity of the senior leadership teams within the companies in which they invest. This analysis will allow Huang to (i) explore whether companies managed by minority executives are treated equally by institutional investors or whether such investors exhibit racial bias; and (ii) explore whether funds managed by minorities are treated equally by investors. To this end, she will first construct a novel dataset consisting of the racial/ethnic affiliation of all mutual managers and corporate executives of U.S-listed firms. Using this dataset, Huang will compare the portfolio composition and performance of white-dominant and minority-dominant mutual funds, focusing on the firms in their portfolio that have senior leadership teams with particular patterns of racial composition. She will also look at how investors respond to the success or failure of white-dominant vs. minority-dominant mutual fund management teams. The results of this study will hopefully shed new light and provide new insights into how the racial and ethnic diversity of institutional investors in the U.S. is associated with the diversity of the leadership teams of corporations in which they invest.

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