Yuhai Xuan is Dean’s Professor of Finance in The Paul Merage School of Business at the University of California, Irvine, and an Associate Editor of the Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Management Science, and the Journal of Empirical Finance.  Prior to joining UC Irvine, he served on the faculty of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2015–2019) and the Harvard Business School (2006–2015).

Professor Xuan is an award-winning teacher who has taught a variety of courses in the MBA, Master of Finance, and Executive Education programs at Illinois and at Harvard. He has been selected to the List of Teachers Ranked as Excellent and received three consecutive Best Professor awards at Illinois, and has been awarded the Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching. Additionally, he served as the inaugural Academic Director of the Online MBA program at Illinois and was the recipient of the 2018–2019 Dean’s Impact Award for his leadership role in the program.

Professor Xuan's research focuses on empirical corporate finance, corporate governance, and behavioral finance.  His work has been published in leading academic journals in finance, and has been covered in various media outlets including Bloomberg, Business Insider, The Economist, the Financial Times, Forbes, The New York Times, Reuters, and The Wall Street Journal.  He has been awarded the 2011 Jensen Prize (First Place Winner) for the best corporate finance paper published in the Journal of Financial Economics, and has presented his work at more than 40 universities and numerous national and international conferences.

Professor Xuan holds an AM and a PhD in Business Economics from Harvard University.