Team Leader

Prof. Degui Li

Distinguished Professor of Business Economics, Faculty of Business Administration

Professor Li has been working on a range of research topics including time series analysis, panel data modeling, functional data analysis, network data modeling, financial econometrics, nonparametric & semiparametric econometrics and high-dimensional econometrics. His research works have been published in leading journals in econometrics, statistics and machine learning such as Annals of Statistics, Econometric Theory, Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Machine Learning Research and Journal of the American Statistical Association. Professor Li was awarded the Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (Australian Research Council) in 2011 and the Leverhulme Research Fellowship in 2023. He is the Co-Editor of Econometric Theory and Associate Editor of Journal of Time Series Analysis.

Research Team

Prof. Jun Yu

UMDF Chair Professor

Faculty of Business Administration

Prof. Jun YU, a financial econometrician, currently serves as the Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration at the University of Macau and he is also appointed as the University of Macau Development Foundation Chair Professor of Finance and Economics. He serves as an Associate Editor for prestigious international journals such as the Journal of Econometrics and Econometric Theory. Furthermore, Prof. Jun YU is a founding member of the International Society for Financial Econometrics and a Fellow of The Journal of Econometrics.

Professor Jun YU obtained his PhD degree in Economics from the University of Western Ontario in Canada. He has published over 90 articles in top international academic journals such as the Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Econometrics, Management Science, and International Economic Review. Collaborating with scholars from the United States and Australia, he has developed a tool to measure exuberance in financial markets, which have been widely adopted across countries and regions in the US, Europe, and Asia, serving as a valuable resource for identifying financial crises and asset bubbles, as well as informing economic policies.

Prof. Wenyang Zhang

Chair Professor

Faculty of Business Administration

Prof. Wenyang Zhang is a Chair Professor of Business Intelligence and Analytics at Faculty of Business Administration.  He is an expert in High Dimensional/Big Data Analysis, Financial Data Analysis, Nonparametric Modelling, Nonlinear Time Series, Survival Analysis, Functional Data Analysis, Spatial Data Analysis, Multi-level Modelling and Structural Equation Models.  He is an associate editor of The Annals of Statistics, of Journal of the American Statistical Association, and of Journal of Business & Economic Statistics.

Prof. Jia Chen

Professor

Faculty of Social Sciences

Jia Chen is currently a professor of econometrics at the University of Macau. Before joining Macau, she worked in the University of Queensland, Australia, between 2011-2013, and University of York, UK, between 2013-2024. Jia Chen’s research interests include panel data econometrics, high-dimensional data analysis, and nonparametric and semiparametric methods. Her research works have been published in leading econometrics and statistics journals. She is an associate editor for Economic Modelling, Journal of Nonparametric Statistics, and Australian & New Zealand Journal of Statistics.

Prof. Zhi Liu

Professor

Faculty of Science and Technology

Zhi LIU is a full professor of Mathematics at the University of Macau, primarily focuses his research on statistics and its interdisciplinary areas. His research interests include statistical analysis of stochastic processes, financial statistics, and the application of machine learning in bioinformatics and medical data. Some of his major contributions include the development of model testing for continuous-time models and estimation theories for volatility in different scenarios, as well as the establishment of a predictive model for the glomerular filtration rate of local chronic kidney disease patients in Macau. His papers have been published in international journals of statistics and its related fields, such as the Annals of Statistics, the Journal of the American Statistical Association, the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, Journal of Econometrics, Quantitative Economics, Econometric Theory, Econometrics Journal, Journal of Banking and Finance, Finance and Stochastics, Bioinformatics, and AAAI, among others. He has led and completed over ten projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation and the Macau government.

Prof. Lihu Xu

Associate Professor

Faculty of Science and Technology

Dr. Lihu Xu is currently an associate professor in the Department of Mathematics. He received his PhD from Imperial College London, and did postdoctoral research at Bonn University, Technology University of Eindhoven, and Technology University of Berlin. He was a visiting scholar at Boston College from 01/2024 to 07/2024 and a visiting faculty at Harvard University from 01/2024 to 07/2024. Dr. Xu’s research interests include several topics in the field of probability, statistics and data science: applied stochastic processes, large deviations (rare events), normal and non-normal approximations, Stein’s method, with their applications to high dimensional statistics and stochastic algorithms in machine learning. He is also interested in applying probability to machine learning and mathematical modellings.

Prof. Yang Zu

Associate Professor

Faculty of Social Sciences

Prof. Yang Zu is an Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Macau. He obtained his PhD in Econometrics from the University of Amsterdam. His research interests include financial econometrics and time series econometrics. His research has appeared in leading academic journals, including Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Business and Economics Statistics, Econometric Theory, Journal of Applied Econometrics, Journal of Financial Econometrics, Journal of Empirical Finance, Econometrics Journal, and Econometric Reviews.

Prof. Yi DING

Assistant Professor

Faculty of Business Administration

Prof. Yi Ding is Assistant Professor of Business Intelligence and Analytics at Faculty of Business Administration, University of Macau. Her expertise lies in the field of financial technology, specifically high-frequency financial big data, and statistical machine learning. Her other research interests include financial econometrics and high-dimensional statistics. Dr. Ding has published papers in the <em>Journal of Econometrics</em> and <em>Journal of the American Statistical Association</em>.

Prof. Yubo Tao

Assistant Professor

Faculty of Social Sciences

Prof. Tao received his PhD in economics from Singapore Management University. He obtained his Master degree in finance at Renmin University of China and Bachelor degrees in economics and in management at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics. Prof. Tao’s research interests lie in econometrics and empirical asset pricing.

Prof. Zhixiang Zhang

Assistant Professor

Faculty of Science and Technology

Zhixiang Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau. He earned his Ph.D. in statistics from Nanyang Technological University and Bachelor’s degree from University of Science and Technology of China. His research interests include random matrix theory, high-dimensional statistics inference, and randomized algorithms for large-scale data analysis.

Prof. Chen Zhang

Research Assistant Professor

Faculty of Business Administration

Chen Zhang is a Research Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Macau. He earned his PhD in Finance from Xiamen University and subsequently served as a Postdoctoral Researcher at Singapore Management University. His research primarily focuses on financial econometrics, with an emphasis on volatility models and yield curves. Prof. Zhang has published his work in high-impact academic journals, including Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Time Series Analysis, and Quantitative Finance.