Xuanchen Zhang

Email: [email protected]
Tel: 0121 204 3965
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Xuanchen Zhang is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Finance at Aston Business School, which he joined in December 2024. He holds a PhD in Finance from King's Business School, King's College London.

His research sits at the intersection of behavioural decision theory and empirical asset pricing, with particular interests in prospect theory, salience theory, probability weighting and investor attention. He examines how investor beliefs and risk preferences generate mispricing and anomalies across asset classes, including US and international equities, mutual funds, equity options and currency options. His work has been published in the Review of Finance, the Journal of Banking and Finance and the European Journal of Finance, and he is extending this agenda into corporate finance, corporate governance, innovation and strategy.

He is Co-Investigator on a £50,000 ESRC / Productivity Institute Business Innovation award examining how diversity and dynamics within top management teams shape productivity in UK firms — an interdisciplinary collaboration spanning economics, finance, organisational psychology and leadership studies. He currently welcomes PhD applications in behavioural asset pricing, cross-sectional return predictability, corporate finance, corporate governance, innovation and strategy.

At Aston he leads modules across undergraduate, MBA and online distance-learning provision. He previously taught postgraduate students at King's College London in financial modelling, quantitative research methods and Python programming for finance. His teaching emphasises applying finance theory through empirical data analysis and computational techniques, preparing students for both academic and industry roles. He completed the Aston PGCert in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education with Distinction and is a Fellow of Advance HE.

Beyond academia, he has substantial industry experience as a Senior Risk Consultant with a London-based regulatory reporting provider serving alternative investment funds and institutional investors. He led ESG and regulatory compliance work across SFDR, NFRD, CSRD, ESRS and the EU Taxonomy, developed Python automation for Basel/CRR and Solvency II reporting, and built risk methodologies including Value at Risk and credit valuation adjustment for OTC derivatives, working with global asset managers including BlackRock, PGIM, Nuveen, Schroders and Macquarie.

He holds an MSc in Financial Mathematics with distinction from King's College London and is a Certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM®).

Empirical asset pricing, behavioural finance, cross-sectional return predictability, investor attention, equity and currency options, corporate finance, corporate governance, innovation and strategy.

Xuanchen Zhang's research focuses on empirical asset pricing, behavioural finance, cross-sectional return predictability and investor attention.