Xijin(CJ) Huang

I am a Ph.D. candidate in Finance at the University of Connecticut School of Business.

I will be on the 2025–2026 academic job market.

My research focuses on Investments, mutual funds, ETFs, investor behavior, geopolitical risk, and the growing influence of artificial intelligence on financial markets. In my job market paper, I use text-based indices, large-scale datasets, and econometric tools to study how institutional and retail investors reallocate capital under changing political and technological conditions.

I began my doctoral studies in Fall 2021. Before that, I worked as a Quantitative Analyst at China Merchants Fund Management in Shenzhen, managing factor-driven hedge portfolios. I earned my M.S. in Operations Research from Columbia University and my B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Washington.

I am originally from Guangzhou, China.

Email: xijin.huang@uconn.edu

Working Papers

How Mutual Fund Managers and Investors Respond to U.S.–China Geopolitical Risk (Solo Authored) - Scheduled: AFA 2026 Ph.D. Poster

Job Market Paper

This paper examines how mutual fund managers and investors respond to U.S.–China geopolitical risk. I construct a novel bilateral geopolitical risk index from White House press briefings and develop a measure that isolates fund managers’ active reallocation decisions from fund flows and price movements. When risk rises, U.S. managers reduce allocations to Chinese equities, reallocate from Asia high- to low-risk regions, and shift domestic holdings toward firms with lower exposure to China. Chinese managers pull back from local markets but maintain U.S. exposure. These responses are more pronounced after 2018. U.S. mutual fund investors are more sensitive to geopolitical risk than Chinese investors. The findings demonstrate geopolitical risk significantly influences international capital allocation. They also reveal heterogeneous responses across countries and investor types.

Mutual Funds, ETFs, and the Impact of Investor Flows on Fund Performance
with Jose Vicente Martinez
- Reject & Resubmit, Management Science
- University of Cologne CFR Seminar*
- Scheduled: SFA 2025, FMA 2025

We isolate the impact of investor flows on fund performance using MF-ETF twins. Flows cost MFs 12─14 bps per year - a significant amount but much lower than earlier estimates. Costs are higher for fixed-income MFs and lower for equity MFs. Most of these costs are direct costs, associated with increased liquidity-motivated trading. Indirect costs, the result of maintaining suboptimal cash levels to accommodate flows, are modest. The costs of investor flows for MFs are similar to the costs MF investors would have incurred if they had invested in ETFs instead. Investor flows are not costly for ETFs.

Works in Progress

Hedging Artificial Intelligence Risk
with Jose Vicente Martinez, Michael Pokojovy and Matthias Qian

Registered Private Equity Fund (working title)
with Yiming Qian and Tong Yao

Teaching

University of Connecticut

Fall 2023: FNCE 3101 - Financial Management

Fall 2024: FNCE 3101 - Financial Management

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse