Dr. Harold Huibing Zhang
- Professor of Finance and Managerial Economics
- Ashbel Smith Professor
The University of Texas at Dallas supports the Ashbel Smith Professorship. Dr. Ashbel Smith was the first president of the UT System Board of Regents. He had a long and distinguished career in medicine, education and public service. During his term on the Board of Regents, Smith was dedicated to recruiting the best faculty members available and to developing a curriculum befitting a “university of the first class.” Smith became known as both the “father of Texas medicine” and the “father of The University of Texas.”
“Research challenges assumptions and deepens our understanding of the world — something I’m proud to pursue in an environment that values rigor, curiosity and impact.”
Dr. Harold Huibing Zhang entered academia driven by a passion for deep, analytical thinking and a desire to contribute to the understanding of financial markets through rigorous research.
He chose the field of finance because of its dynamic nature and its critical role in shaping economic outcomes, both at the firm level and across global economies.
Inspired by his fascination with how risks are processed in financial systems and reflected in investor and firm decisions, Zhang’s research interests are rooted in the interplay among economic forces, market participants and asset pricing.
Zhang joined The University of Texas at Dallas in 2005 after holding academic positions at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Carnegie Mellon University. He teaches courses in investment theory and practice, portfolio analysis and management, and financial modeling for investment analysis, as well as a doctoral seminar on theoretical asset pricing.
His work has been published in some of the leading academic journals in his discipline, including The Journal of Finance, The Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and The Accounting Review.
He received the Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award from the Naveen Jindal School of Management for 2010-2011.
Zhang is an associate editor of the Journal of Financial Econometrics and the Quarterly Journal of Finance, and previously served as an associate editor of Financial Management and the Journal of Business & Economic Statistics.
He is a TIAA Institute fellow emeritus and received the institute’s 2004 Paul A. Samuelson Award for outstanding scholarly writing on lifelong financial security for the paper “Optimal Asset Location and Allocation with Taxable and Tax-Deferred Investing,” published in The Journal of Finance.
Zhang is a member of The American Finance Association and the Society for Financial Studies.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in ocean engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and a PhD in economics from Duke University.