Economics Spotlighted Student: David Kong '20

Economics major David Kong ’20 was born in Hong Kong. At age 6 his family moved to Shanghai where he grew up and attended high school. His high school teachers had attended large colleges and they all agreed that there are benefits to attending a small college with small class sizes. This planted a seed in David’s pursuit of the right college.

Seeking an academically distinguished school was paramount, as was playing on a tennis team. He was initially looking at Division I schools but after some exploring he knew that lifestyle would not be the best fit for him.

After visiting Haverford College’s campus, sitting in on some classes, and meeting the tennis coach and team members, he applied Early Decision. Playing both singles and doubles, tennis has been one of the highlights of David’s college life. His team-mates are friends for life!

David will matriculate with a major in Economics and a minor in Philosophy. He naturally gravitated toward economics after taking AP macro and microeconomics in high school. However, his passion for philosophy came as a complete surprise.

Economics Professor Saleha Jilani’s class, Economic Development and Transformation: China vs India, was a fascinating topic for David to explore. Coming from China, he never systematically processed its astounding economic growth of the last 30-40 years. He just lived it. So, taking a class about it has been compelling. Another class that David highlighted in our interview is Bryn Mawr College’s Taming the Modern Corporation, taught by economics visitor Andrew Sfekas. The course discussed pharmaceutical pricing models, patents, and movie theatre price discrimination, among other things.

David spent his Junior year abroad at the London School of Economics (LSE). It was very different from the Haverford experience, comprised of a large University in the heart of a metropolis, London.  LSE is extremely finance management and law driven, delivering a completely different educational experience from the small liberal arts education that Haverford offers, which is specifically why he wanted to go there, to experience that type of educational platform. He took finance and law classes and he traveled quite a bit as a member of  LSE’s tennis team. Once tennis ended, he traveled a lot more, visiting places like Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, and Scotland. His parents visited him in April, and they went to St. Andrews, a mecca for golfers, where he and his family played a few rounds of golf.

David’s Mother is a banker and he’s confident that she unconsciously planted the seed of banking in his character development. All of his summer internships have been with banks. The summer following his freshman year, he worked at Puji Capital, in Shanghai. The experience provided him with good exposure to the inner workings of a globally focused investment firm.  He was exposed to the fundamentals of accounting, he scrutinized financial statements, and acquired a deeper understanding of how foreign companies can partner with, and do business with, Chinese companies.

The summer after his sophomore year he lived in Palo Alto, CA working for ShangBay Capital, a medical devices and biotechnological firm. He served as an analyst composing due diligence reports on potential investment opportunities and he reviewed and analyzed quarterly progress reports. Because ShangBay Capital is a very young, and small firm, David had the privilege of sitting in on all meetings, taking minutes.

Last summer he worked as an investment banking analyst for Robert W. Baird & Co., living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He worked on the sell-side of Mergers and Acquisitions, preparing marketing materials, projecting revenues, as well as collaborating with the team that pitches contracts.  Congratulations David! He has accepted a full-time position with Baird as an analyst. He will also be applying to business schools in late May or June.

David has kept busy with extracurricular activities. This year he’s worked in the Admissions Office serving as a tour guide. He also founded the Haverford Finance Initiatives Club with “the mission of providing support and guidance to students as they explore their potential interest in a career in finance.” In fact, this year he and others have written a resolution to present at plenary on Haverford’s endowment investments, with the goal of putting a formal framework into the rules of the College’s investments.

With the rise of socially responsible investing, David’s thesis examines whether a company can do well while doing good. Using financial data and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) ratings data from Refinitiv for S&P 500 companies over the last 10 years, his thesis empirically tests whether there are correlations between a company's performance (as proxied by the Sharpe ratio) and its ESG sores. Since ESG scores are considered by most investment professionals as good proxies for a company's overall risk management regarding ESG factors, David’s thesis tests whether such risk mitigation (mal)practices carry over to the performance side.