The bestseller and Hollywood film The Big Short squarely lays the blame for the 2008 financial crisis on greedy bankers. Other publications and movies have taken a similar line, with Wall Street firmly in their cross hairs.

With many economies still recovering, analysts, economists and governments are also looking at the meltdown and its consequences, and trying to ensure it never happens again. But while the 2008 crisis is a popular mainstream topic, the historical importance of financial development and its social impact on modern societies is now a focus of academic study.

Professor Chen Zhiwu is the Director of the Asia Global Institute (AGI) and the Victor and William Fung Professor in Economics at the School of Economics and Finance, The University of Hong Kong (HKU). Prior
to joining the AGI, he has been Professor of Finance at Yale University for 17 years (is currently on leave). Professor Chen is also a Special-Term Visiting Professor at the School of Economics at Peking University.

Professor Chen’s research on finance theory has most recently included the social impact of financial development from an historical perspective. His findings show that finance is important and fundamental for
modern societies, and that it allows individuals, especially women, to be free.

He received his PhD in financial economics from Yale University in 1990; MS in systems engineering from Changsha Institute of Technology in 1986; and BS in computer science from Central-South University in 1983. He was Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (1990-1995); Associate Professor of Finance at Ohio State University (1995-1999); and Professor of Finance at Yale University since 1999; and has been the Victor and William Fung Professor in Economics at HKU since July 2016.  

Professor Chen started his career by publishing research papers in top economics and finance journals on topics related to financial markets and theories of asset pricing. Around 2001, he began to expand research beyond mature markets by investigating market development and institution-building issues in the context of China's transition process and other emerging markets. He successfully led efforts to construct historical
financial and social databases from China's historical archives and has written on economic/social history topics. In 2013, he started the annual Summer School for Quantitative History at Tsinghua University and continues to organise it at Peking University, with the goal of promoting quantitative historical research in China and beyond.

He has received numerous research rewards including the Graham and Dodd Award (2013) for the Best Paper of 2013 in the Financial Analyst Journal, the Pacesetter Research Award (1999), the Merton Miller Prize (1994), and the Chicago Board Options Exchange Competitive Research Award (1994). In Burson-Marsteller’s 2012 ‘G20 Influencers’ report, Professor Chen was listed as one of the top ten political influencers in China. He has also received a number of book awards in China and Hong Kong, among which are 23 awards for The Logic of Finance in China and Hong Kong, and the best book award from hexun.com for Why are the Chinese Industrious and Yet Not Rich.

Professor Chen is on the International Advisory Board of the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC), Global Advisory Council of China Minsheng Investment Group, and on the Board of Directors at PetroChina, Bank of Communications, and Noah Holdings.  He was Chief Academic Advisor to two 10-episode CCTV documentary series, Wall Street and Money, and a member of the Expert Committee for the formation of the China Investment Corporation. His work has been featured in newspapers and magazines in the United States, Hong Kong, Mainland China and other countries.