Chicago Booth Review. “We dug into Yiran's Dropbox and found two polished papers, which were then distributed to a four-person committee (Professors Lars Peter Hansen, Veronica Guerrieri, Doron Ravid, and me),” Zhiguo He, the Fuji Bank and Heller Professor of Finance and co-chair of Fan's dissertation committee, said via email. “Lars and I read both papers carefully, digested their key economic messages, and prepared the slides for each paper,” He wrote. “We then scheduled a public lecture with a wide audience (following the Ph.D. dissertation defense rules at UChicago), to which we presented the two papers. During the presentation, it became clear to the four-person committee that Yiran's papers had met the bar for a Ph.D. degree. We voted right after the lecture, and Lars announced it after the public lecture.”