Zheng Sun

Zheng Sun is a Professor of Finance at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine, where she has been a faculty member since 2007. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2015 and to Professor in 2023. She currently serves as the faculty director of the Master of Finance (MFIN) program and teaches core courses in the curriculum.

Her educational background includes a PhD from New York University, an MS from Ohio State University, and a BS from Peking University.

• PhD, New York University
• MS, Ohio State University
• BS, Peking University

Professor Sun's research centers on empirical asset pricing, investments, market microstructure, and banking. Her work explores institutional investors, mutual funds, hedge funds, corporate bonds, and loan markets, often analyzing investor behavior, information spillovers, and market fragility. She employs rigorous empirical methods to examine how investor demand, learning, and sentiment affect asset prices.

The recent articles highlight a strong focus on hedge fund performance, investor behavior, and market dynamics. Themes include time-varying investor demand, partisan market polarization, Bayesian learning in asset management, and the impact of illiquidity on financial stability. Her research increasingly incorporates behavioral and macroeconomic dimensions, with recent work on geopolitical risk, generative AI in finance, and the effects of sleep on trading. The publications span top journals in finance and economics, indicating a consistent contribution to empirical finance.

Professor Sun has presented her research at leading conferences such as the American Finance Association, Western Finance Association, NBER, and European Finance Association, and has been invited to speak at regulatory bodies including the SEC, Federal Reserve Board, and FINRA.

She advises students through her leadership in the MFIN program and collaborative research. While specific advisees are not listed, her extensive co-authorship with junior scholars suggests active mentorship. She has not received any explicitly mentioned scientific awards in the provided text.

Her research is conducted within the academic environment of the Merage School, supported by collaborations with faculty and access to financial databases and research centers. She is actively engaged in current topics such as AI in finance and behavioral aspects of investing.