Rate My Professor Zhiwu Chen

Professor Chen's research focuses on finance theory, sociology of finance, quantitative history, economic history, emerging markets, and China’s economy and capital markets. His contributions have earned significant recognition, including the “Economist of the Year 2023” award from South Reviews Magazine, the Graham and Dodd Award for the best paper in the Financial Analysts Journal in 2013, the Merton Miller Prize in 1994, and a record HK$67.32 million grant under the Areas of Excellence Scheme in 2022 for the Quantitative History of China project. Notable publications include “Banking on the Confucian Clan: Why China Developed Financial Markets So Late” with Chicheng Ma and Andrew Sinclair in The Economic Journal (2022), “Hedging Desperation: How Kinship Networks Reduced Cannibalism in Historical China” with Zhan Lin and Xiaoming Zhang in the Journal of Comparative Economics (2024), “Rise of the South: How Arab-led Maritime Trade Transformed China, 671–1371 CE” in the Asia-Pacific Economic History Review (2025), and books such as Logic of Civilization: How Humans have Innovated to Deal with Risk (CITIC Press, 2022) and multiple volumes of Quantitative History Research co-edited with others (2015–2024). One of his papers, “Empirical Performance of Alternative Option Pricing Models,” ranks among the top 50 most cited articles of all time in the Journal of Finance.