Dr. Ren Zhang joins department

We are very pleased to welcome Ren Zhang as an assistant professor. He is a newly minted Ph.D. from Southern Methodist University, with research specialties in monetary economics, forecasting and exchange rate fluctuation. His addition to our faculty strengthens our position in macroeconomics, and he is a welcome addition to our recently revised MA program in Financial Economics. Dr. Zhang is off to a fast start with his research, as two of his papers have recently been accepted into Empirical Economics and Economic Enquiry.

Ren originally hails from Hefei, China – a “medium-sized” town of only 5 million people in central China. In China, he earned degrees at Tianjin University and Central University before earning his Ph.D. at SMU. While at SMU he interned at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, and he worked on several projects surrounding international influences on interest rates in the U.S. He is probably the most physically fit of our faculty, as he enjoys basketball, badminton and ping-pong; he is the odds-on favorite to win this spring’s department ping-pong tournament.