Research

Work in Progress

“The American `Reparations' That Weren't” (Draft Available Soon? Under Revision)

"Stephen Schuker (1988) claimed Weimar Germany received net capital transfers equal to 2.1% of national income (1919-1931) subsidized by mispriced American credit. I show cumulative net resource transfers during 1924-1931 totaled 0.61% of GNP—less than one-third of his estimate—using reconstructed balance-of-payments data and capital-flow constraints during hyperinflation. Reconciling Schuker's ratio with documented post-stabilization flows requires an implausible 14 billion RM (6.2% of crisis-era GNP) to have entered Germany during 1919-1923, contradicting the June 1922 deposit collapse. Reparations absorbed 70% of foreign inflows, making Germany a fragile intermediary reliant on continued access to foreign funds, not a net beneficiary. Month-by-maturity bond comparisons reveal German sovereign debt consistently priced at a 40-122 basis-point premium over European peers, directly refuting claims of subsidized borrowing. Germany's capacity to pay hinged on creditor sentiment about fiscal sustainability and continued access to international financing, not on fixed domestic fundamentals. When risk appetite turned in 1929-1931, the mechanism reversed: foreign credit dried up, the Reichsbank lost reserves, and the system collapsed—not because Germany lacked industrial capacity but because solvency required uninterrupted external flows."

Questionable Research Ideas:

Here is a list of bad economics research ideas I have from brain-fuzz and drawing from daily inspirations from random encounters of papers: they are often challenging, undesirable, and difficult to research but nonetheless interesting. If you are an economics or economic history researcher: you would be more than welcome to take look! 

If you spot potential in any of these ideas - perhaps you know of relevant datasets, can suggest improved empirical strategies, or see ways to make them more feasible - I'd love to hear from you. I'm also open to potential collaboration. Feel free to reach out at sihao.feng@stcatz.ox.ac.uk

Curating Alpha: The Predictive Power of Institutional Narratives in the Art Market

Asset pricing paradigms struggle where value is socially constructed, as in the art market, relying on expert narratives rather than discernible cash flows. This paper pioneers an approach to empirically capture these narratives, testing whether the quantifiable dynamics of institutional validation predict long-run art market returns. We move beyond standard financial data to construct unique, century-long time-series indices reflecting shifts in expert consensus. These indices codify the evolving endorsement from key arbiters of taste—museum acquisitions, major exhibitions, and scholarly attention—across granular art categories. The central hypothesis posits that lagged changes in these publicly visible, yet costly-to-process, signals of institutional legitimacy act as a latent factor, predicting future price appreciation distinct from standard risk exposures or price-based momentum effects. We investigate if the slow diffusion and interpretation of this qualitative, expert-driven information create systematic return predictability in this notoriously heterogeneous, illiquid market with limited arbitrage. Operationalizing institutional narratives into predictive signals allows a rigorous test of how subjective expert validation influences asset prices. We examine if the slow incorporation of these quantifiable public signals generates return predictability distinct from known factors, providing insights into price formation and market efficiency for assets reliant on qualitative assessment.

St. Catherine’s College, University of Oxford