Jing Zhao joined The School of Business at Portland State University in 2016. Previously Jing was on the faculty at North Carolina State University. She received her Ph.D. in finance from Pennsylvania State University in 2007.
At PSU, Jing teaches Investments in both undergraduate and graduate programs. Since her arrival at PSU, Jing has also developed from scratch and taught two new courses: Financial Analytics and Modeling in the undergrad program and Applied Econometrics for Financial Analysis in the grad program.
Jing’s research focuses on empirical corporate finance. She is primarily interested in the study of executive compensation and contracts, corporate governance, innovation, institutional ownership, board of directors, corporate social responsibility, and mergers and acquisitions. Jing is also interested in real estate and urban economics research with a focus on how school choice programs impact real estate development and the environment. She has published articles in the Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Corporate Finance, Financial Management, Real Estate Economics, and others. She has won several awards and grants including the Eastern Finance Association Meeting Outstanding Paper Award in International Finance, Best Paper Award in NTU International Conference on Economics, Finance and Accounting, Financial Review’s Readers’ Choice Best Paper Award and grants from The Friedman Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts. Jing’s research has been featured in news media including MSNBC, NBC News, National Public Radio (NPR), Fast Company, Psychology Today and Intellectual Asset Management (IAM), among many others. In 2020, Jing’s paper titled “Do Pro-diversity Policies Improve Corporate Innovation?” has been listed #10 in Financial Times’ Top 100 Business Research with Social Impact.