Haokun (Sam) Sun
Welcome!
I am a PhD candidate in Applied Economics & Management (Finance Field) at SC Johnson College of Business, Cornell University.
My research focuses on Financial Intermediation, Political Economy, Contract Theory, and Applied Econometrics.
I publish under my Chinese name, Haokun Sun (pronounced "How-come Sun"); I often go by Sam.
I am on the 2024-25 academic job market.
Job Market Paper
Institutions had divergent preferences for benchmarks based on their funding structure. Replacing a financial benchmark causes distributional consequences for both the supply and demand sides of the loan market.
Presentations: FMA Doctoral Student Consortium (scheduled), University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (scheduled), Virginia Tech (scheduled), Cornell Econ Alumni Workshop, Cornell Finance Brownbag, Dalhousie University, University of Wisconsin-Madison Joint IO/Finance.
Other Papers
"Contractual innovation and the evolution of boilerplate in credit agreements", with Justin Murfin, Reject and Resubmit, Journal of Financial Economics (first-time submission)
Contracts have grown longer, more complex, but more standardized, with small banks driving innovation in the language.
Presentations: CICF, Dartmouth College, Kansas University, Northeastern University, Peking University, Queen’s University, Southern Methodist University, University of Georgia, University of Maryland, University of Miami, University of South Carolina, University of Texas-Austin.
Standing committee members coordinately promote their connected candidates, subject to a majority rule that changes across the presidency.
Presentations: ASSA Annual Meeting, APSA Annual Meeting, Cornell 100 Years of Economic Development, Peking University, University of Chicago, International Economic Association World Congress
"The power and influence of rating agencies with insights into their misuse", with Kaushik Basu, Economic Modelling, 2022
Rating agencies can create a focal point for investors, prompting behavior that makes the ratings right in retrospect. Previously titled "Follow me, I will be right".
Presentations: Cornell Development, Economic Modeling Conference 2021
Teaching Experiences
Teaching Assistant, Cornell University, 2019-24
AEM4260 Fixed-Income Securities (Undergrad)
AEM4670 Investments (Undergrad)
AEM5600 Managerial Economics (Master's)
ECON3801 Introduction to Game Theory (Undergrad)
ECON4907 Asymmetric Information and Contracts (Undergrad)
Lecture Material Organizer, London School of Economics, 2017
Teaching Assistant, Dalhousie University, 2016
ECON3700 Mathematics for Economists (Undergrad)
MATH2060 Intro. Probability & Statistics (Undergrad)
Conferences & Seminars
2024: FMA Doctoral Student Consortium (sched.), UNC-Chapel Hill (sched.), Virginia Tech (sched.), CICF, Cornell Econ Alumni Workshop, Cornell Finance Brownbag, Dalhousie University, UW-Madison Joint IO/Finance
2023: APSA Annual Meeting, Cornell GSA, Cornell TWIPS, Peking University
2022: ASSA Annual Meeting, Cornell 100 Years of Economic Development, Cornell GSA
2021: UChicago CCSRG, Peking University, Cornell Development Workshop, IEA World Congress
2015: World Bank, SGPE Annual Conference in Crieff
Discussions
Better than Human? Experiments with AI Debt Collectors, by James Choi, Dong Huang, Zhishu Yang, and Qi Zhang, CICF 2024
Refereeing
Games and Economic Behavior, Economic Modelling, China Economic Review