Professor Jie (Jay) Cao is a full professor of finance at the School of Accounting and Finance, Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). He serves on the Advisory Council for Monetary Research at the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary and Financial Research (HKIMR), the Academic and Accreditation Advisory Committee of the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) of Hong Kong, and the Academic Working Group for the United Nations Sustainable Stock Exchanges (SSE) Initiative. Prof. Cao is an Associate Editor for Financial Management and the Asia-Pacific Journal of Financial Studies, an Editorial Board Member of the Financial Analysts Journal, and a Co-Editor of The International Review of Finance. He has been appointed by the University Grants Committee (UGC) as a member of the Business & Economics Panel for the 2026 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Prior to joining PolyU, he was a tenured associate professor of finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School, where he served for 13 years.

Prof. Cao received his Ph.D. in Finance from the University of Texas at Austin in 2009 and his B.A. in Economics from Peking University in 2002. His research focuses on empirical asset pricing, derivatives, and sustainable finance. His work has been published or is forthcoming in leading journals such as the Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and Management Science. Prof. Cao serves as Principal Investigator on several competitive Hong Kong RGC grants, as well as numerous research projects funded by both academic and industry sponsors, including The Canadian Derivatives Institute (CDI) and the Geneva Institute for Wealth Management. He has received multiple research awards, such as the AAM–CAMRI Prize in Asset Management (Asia Asset Management and NUS), the ETF Research Academy Award (Paris–Dauphine House of Finance and Lyxor Asset Management), the Chicago Quantitative Alliance (CQA) Academic Competition Award, and best paper awards at conferences including the 28th Australian Finance & Banking Conference, the 2020 FMA Consortium on Asset Management, and the 2020 Northern Finance Association Annual Conference.

Prof. Cao has taught undergraduate Investments, MSc Fixed Income, finance MBA Quantitative Investing, and Ph.D. Empirical Asset Pricing during the past years. He received the Outstanding Teaching Award of CUHK Business School. He has also provided consulting services for several fintech start-ups and hedge funds.

• Bachelor of Arts, Peking University
• Master of Science, The University of Texas at Austin
• Doctor of Philosophy, The University of Texas at Austin