Rate My Professor Pingyang Gao

Professor Pingyang Gao is a member of the Accounting and Law area at HKU Business School, University of Hong Kong. He joined the school in 2020 as the Zhang Yonghong Professor in Accounting. He also serves as Associate Dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange) and DBA Programme Director. Prior to his appointment at HKU, Gao was on the faculty of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business since 2008. He spent the fall of 2019 as a visiting professor at Yale University. Gao received a bachelor’s degree from Renmin University of China in 2002, a master’s degree from Peking University in 2004, and a PhD degree from Yale University in 2008.

His research has focused on important public policy and securities regulation issues with respect to capital markets and corporate governance. He has conducted extensive research on accounting issues in the banking industries as exposed by the financial crisis of 2007-2009, the worldwide adoption of IFRS, and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 in the United States. He has also worked on various aspects of disclosure and securities regulations, in particular in the intersection of financial reporting with capital markets and corporate governance. His research has been published in all top accounting journals. Selected publications include “Manipulation, Panic Runs, and the Short Selling Ban” (Journal of Economic Theory, 2025), “Mark-to-Market, Loan Retention, and Loan Origination” (The Accounting Review, 2023), “The Economic Consequences of Discrete Recognition and Continuous Measurement” (Journal of Accounting and Economics, 2020), and “Disclosure Quality, Cost of Capital, and Investor Welfare” (The Accounting Review, 2010). He is a recipient of the American Accounting Association Competitive Manuscript Award and several Best Paper awards of conferences. He has received several honors, including the IBM Faculty Scholar, PCL Faculty Scholar, and Centel Foundation/Robert P. Reuss Faculty Scholar. He is a member of the Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society at Yale University. Gao is on the editorial board of the Journal of Accounting Research and regularly reviews papers for major journals in accounting, finance, and economics. He participates regularly in the activities of professional organizations, including AAA, AFA, AEA, and CAPANA. He is also an inactive CPA in China.