Welcome! I am an Assistant Professor of Finance at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). I received my PhD from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2023.
My research interests are corporate finance, financial markets and quantitative models.
Email: yujh@hku.hk. Office: 1017 K.K. Leung Building, HKU. My HKU website. My CV is available here.
If you are interested in RAship, please contact me. I am looking for students with strong quantitative backgrounds.
Publications
[1] "Capital Spillover, House Prices, and Consumer Spending: Quasi-Experimental Evidence from House Purchase Restrictions", with Yinglu Deng, Li Liao and Yu Zhang, The Review of Financial Studies 35(6), June 2022, pp.3060-3099. [WP version]
Policy-induced out-of-town housing demand increases house prices. The rising house prices lead to an increase in household consumption through the housing wealth effect channel. The welfare consequences of the house price increase are redistributive: renters lose and homeowners gain.
[2] "Subsidizing Failing Firms: Evidence from Chinese Restaurants", with Yinglu Deng, Fangzhou Lu and Hao Zheng, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis 59(8), December 2024, pp.3803-3834 . [WP version]
Financial stimulus policies (rent reductions) during macro distress improve restaurants' performance, and strengthen private efforts to resurrect. The effect of rent reductions varies with a restaurant's size and organizational structure.
Working Papers
[1] "Payment Innovation and Interbank Competition", with Rodney Garratt and Haoxiang Zhu (Dec 2025).
A theoretical analysis of how innovation in the form of public payment infrastructures, accessible to all banks with equal efficacy, affects competition in the banking sector.
Conferences: AEA 2026, AFA 2022.
[2] "Why Are Accounts Receivable Backed Loans Expensive?" [SSRN version]（Jun 2025）
Using available and hand-collect data on accounts receivable backed loans, we conduct a systematic study of their functioning and pricing.
Conferences: CICF 2025, SFS Cavalcade 2023.
[3] "Dual Trading, Fee Competition, and Price Discovery at the Market Close", with Jingxiong Hu [SSRN version] (Mar 2025).
Trading volume at "guaranteed close" reached about 30% of that in closing auctions. We find that "guaranteed close" improves price discovery, both empirically and theoretically.
Conferences: FIRS 2025, EuroFA 2022, NFA 2022, FMA 2022 (Semifinalist for best paper in market microstructure), Microstructure Exchange 2022.
[4] "The Aggregate Return to Venture Investors", with Ravi Jagannathan, and Shumiao Ouyang. (Jan 2024) R&R at the Review of Finance.
We propose an alternative measure of the return to VC investments: the return to the aggregate portfolio of all equity investments made in various VC funding rounds.
Conferences: AFA 2020.