School of Mathematical Sciences Academic Report [2025] No. 039  

(High-Level University Construction Series Report No. 1061)  

Lecture Title: A New Proof of the Steady State Solutions to a 2D Smoluchowski Equation

Speaker: Xu Xiang (Associate Professor, Old Dominion University)  

Date & Time: 2:00–3:00 PM, Friday, May 23, 2025  

Venue: Room 501, Huixing Building  

Abstract: We develop a theoretical model to study investors' trading behavior in the presence of large investors' influence on a firm's equity. We show that, for a good stock, large investors tend to invest more heavily than smart small investors, even though they predict the same equity returns. However, the smart small investors obtain more welfare and thus perform as free riders in this economy. Moreover, the analyses are extended to firms with more than one influential large investor. We find that: (i) the large shareholders collude in trading, and each tends to invest more aggressively as other large shareholders do, and (ii) firms with sole ownership can outperform those with dispersed ownership, if the impact coefficient of the former case exceeds or coincides with the aggregated impact coefficients of the latter.

Biography: Xiang Xu received his PhD degree at the Pennsylvania State University in 2011. After taking postdoctoral positions at Carnegie Mellon University and Purdue University, he joined Department of Mathematics and Statistics as a tenure track assistant professor in 2015, and was promoted to an associate professor in 2021. His main research interests are in nonlinear PDEs and calculus of variations, with applications of problems arising from complex fluids and materials science.

All faculty and students are welcome to attend!

Invited by: Zhang Qingtian

School of Mathematical Sciences  

May 15, 2025