Zhuo Zhong

Zhuo Zhong is an Associate Professor of Finance in the Department of Finance, Faculty of Business and Economics at the University of Melbourne, where he joined in 2014. He earned a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University in 2014, M.A. degrees in Finance from Singapore Management University in 2007 and from Xiamen University in 2008, and a B.A. in Economics from Xiamen University in 2005. Zhong's research specializations include market microstructure, asset pricing theory, network economics, decentralized finance (DeFi), empirical asset pricing, and financial innovation. His work explores trading environments, liquidity shocks, fee structures, and informed trading in various markets.

Zhong has published extensively in leading academic journals such as the Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, Review of Asset Pricing Studies, and Journal of Financial Markets. Key publications include "Innovation and Informed Trading: Evidence from Industry ETFs" with Shiyang Huang and Maureen O’Hara (Review of Financial Studies, 2021), "Inverted Fee Structures, Tick Size, and Market Quality" with Carole Comerton-Forde and Vincent Grégoire (Journal of Financial Economics, 2019), "Relative Tick Size and the Trading Environment" with Maureen O’Hara and Gideon Saar (Review of Asset Pricing Studies, 2019), "Nonstandard Errors" with over 300 co-authors (Journal of Finance, 2024), "Liquidity Shocks and Pension Fund Performance: Evidence from Early Access" with James Brugler and Minsoo Kim (Australian Journal of Management, 2024), "Reducing Opacity in Over-the-Counter Markets" (Journal of Financial Markets, 2016), and "Pre-trade Transparency in Over-the-Counter Bond Markets" with Fan Chen (Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 2017). He received the 2017 NFA Best Paper Award on Market Microstructure for the inverted fee structures paper and the Best Paper Award at the 5th Behavioral Finance and Capital Markets Conference for the pre-trade transparency paper. During his Ph.D., he was awarded the Sage Fellowship (2008–2013), Howard and Abby Milstein Graduate Teaching Assistantship Award (2010), and other grants. Zhong has served as a referee for Management Science, International Review of Finance, Journal of Financial Markets, and Review of Financial Studies, and as program committee member for the European Finance Association Annual Meetings (2015, 2016).

Professional Email: zhuo.zhong@unimelb.edu.au