Press release

PanAgora Announces 22nd Annual Dr. Richard A. Crowell Memorial Prize Winner

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PanAgora Asset Management, Inc. (“PanAgora”), one of the world’s leading quantitative investment firms, announced today the winners of its 22nd annual Dr. Richard A. Crowell Memorial Prize, which recognizes new and cutting-edge academic research that successfully connects theory and practice in quantitative investing and management.

This year’s winning paper was awarded to “New Technologies and Stock Returns,” authored by Jinyoung Kim of Boston College Carroll School of Management.

“This year’s submissions embody PanAgora’s commitment to the advancement of innovative quantitative research in an ever-changing world,” said Eric Sorensen, Ph.D., PanAgora’s President & CEO. “The winning piece examines whether investing in stocks of companies with high exposure to new technologies leads to potentially higher returns due to associated uncertainty. We truly appreciate the research and commitment invested in this year’s submissions and thank all of our participants for their time. Congratulations to the winners for again advancing our field.”

“New Technologies and Stock Returns” uses textual information and citation network data from patent applications to identify tech clusters experiencing rapid growth in new technologies. Further details on this year’s second- and third-prize winners can be found below:

Second prize:

“ChatGPT and Corporate Policies” — This paper introduces a ChatGPT-based investment score derived from conference call texts to capture managerial expectations of corporate policies, particularly changes in capital expenditures, which strongly correlate with CFO survey responses and predict future capital expenditures over multiple quarters. The investment score also forecasts future total, intangible, and R&D investments, and shows that firms with high scores experience significant future abnormal returns, showcasing ChatGPT’s utility in comprehending various corporate policies efficiently across a broad sample and time frame.

  • Manish Jha – J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University

  • Jialin Qian – J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University

  • Michael Weber – University of Chicago Booth School of Business and NBER

Third prize:

“Visual Information in the Age of AI: Evidence from Corporate Executive Presentations” — This paper analyzes corporate executive presentations, which offer rich visual insights into firms’ project designs and production plans, revealing that short-term abnormal returns correlate positively with forward-looking operational information extracted using deep learning techniques. Furthermore, it demonstrates that AI-equipped financial institutions exhibit a stronger response to visual signals compared to other institutions and retail investors, suggesting the emergence of an AI divide in capital markets.

  • Sean Cao – Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland

  • Yichen Cheng – J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University

  • Meng Wang – J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University

  • Yusen Xia – J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University

  • Baozhong Yang – J. Mack Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University

The prize is named in honor of PanAgora’s founder, the late Dr. Richard A. Crowell. Each year, PanAgora solicits submissions from dissertation-stage graduate students and faculty at accredited academic institutions and practitioners in the field of quantitative investment. Papers are judged on their originality, quality of exposition and analytical rigor by a reading committee, comprised of members of PanAgora’s Quantitative Research Group.

For more information about the Crowell Prize and this year’s winning papers, please visit: https://www.panagora.com/crowell-prize/.

About PanAgora Asset Management, Inc.:

Founded in 1985, PanAgora Asset Management, Inc. is a leading global investment firm which utilizes sophisticated quantitative techniques that incorporate fundamental insights and vast amounts of market information spanning absolute and relative return strategies within alternative, risk premia and active equity disciplines. More information can be found by visiting www.panagora.com.