Finance Ph.D. Candidate
University of British Columbia
Email: gen.li@sauder.ubc.ca
Welcome! I am a Finance PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Sauder School of Business. Before joining UBC, I worked as a pre-doctoral research associate at Yale School of Management.
I am on the 2025/2026 job market.
Research Interests: Real Estate Finance, Asset Pricing, Household Finance
1. Housing Duration and Interest Rates: Evidence from Reaching-for-Income Investors, job market paper, September 2025
Selected Conferences: 21st Annual Olin Finance Conference at WashU (2025), 2025 Bank of Canada Graduate Student Paper Award Workshop, FMA (2025), NFA (2025), UEA (2025), AFA PhD poster session (2026), USC PhD conference (2025)
Awards: Canadian Securities Institute Research Foundation PhD Award
Finalist of the 2025 Bank of Canada Graduate Student Paper Award,
Semi-finalist for the Best Paper Award at the 2025 FMA Annual Meeting
Abstract: Fixed-income theory posits that longer-duration bonds are more sensitive to interest rate changes, and many assume this principle extends to other assets. Contrary to this view, I document a striking inversion in housing markets: shorter-duration properties exhibit greater sensitivity to monetary policy changes. I construct a novel zip-code–level measure of housing duration based on Macaulay duration, showing that shorter duration corresponds to higher rental yields. On average, a 100 basis-point cut in the federal funds rate raises house prices by 1.86 percent over two years, but markets with durations one standard deviation shorter experience an additional 0.71-percentage-point increase—about 38 percent of the average response. Using 30 million property transaction records combined with rental listings, I confirm the inverse duration–sensitivity relationship at the property level. The property-level evidence shows that the inversion is driven by the discount-rate channel through “reaching-for-income” investors. After rate cuts, income-seeking investors disproportionately target high-yield properties for rental purposes and prioritize near-term income over long-run returns. Their demand raises local prices and lowers discount rates more in short- than long-duration markets, generating a non-parallel shift in the housing term structure. Overall, the paper highlights an investor-driven channel in which rental-income preferences shape monetary policy transmission heterogeneity across housing markets.
2. Spatial Extrapolation in the Housing Market, solo-authored, March 2024
Selected Conferences: NFA (2024), FMA (2024), AFA PhD Poster (2025 & 2024), USC PhD conference (2024), AREUEA National Conference (2024), Finance Down Under Conference (2024), Eastern FA (2024), SWFA (2024), 22nd Macro Finance Society Workshop, NFA PhD session (2023)
Awards: Best Doctoral Student Paper in SWFA (2024)
Abstract: This paper introduces “spatial extrapolation,” a concept that refers to how economic expectations for one region are formed by extrapolating from the economic outcomes of another geographic area. We demonstrate this unique form of extrapolation by analyzing the purchasing behavior of out-of-town (OOT) homebuyers. Using data from approximately 3 million OOT housing transactions in the U.S. between 2002 and 2017, we find that a 50% increase in five-year hometown house prices leads OOT buyers to pay 2% more for OOT properties. The higher the hometown house price growth, the lower the realized returns and purchase discounts obtained by OOT buyers. To rule out the wealth effect, the paper designs two strategies. First, we classify renters, migrants, and second-home (SH) buyers to control the wealth increase from hometown properties. Second, we estimate geographic heterogeneity in extrapolative beliefs. We find that OOT buyers from higher extrapolation hometowns increase their purchase prices more after the hometown house price growth. Overall, our research highlights the potential spillover effects of extrapolation into other asset markets and provides evidence that extrapolative expectations have broader effects than previously recognized.
3. The Great Resignation was Caused by the Covid-19 Housing Boom, with Jack Favilukis, February 2023
Selected Conferences: CICF (2023)
Cited in the 2023 Economic Report of the President published by the White House
Abstract: Following the Covid-19 pandemic, U.S. labor force participation declined significantly in 2020, slowly recovering in 2021 and 2022 -- this has been referred to as the Great Resignation. The decline has been concentrated among older Americans. By 2022, the labor force participation of workers in their prime returned to its 2019 level, while older workers' participation continued to fall, responsible for almost the entire decline in the overall labor force participation rate. At the same time, the U.S. experienced large booms in both the equity and housing markets. We show that the Great Resignation among older workers can be fully explained by increases in housing wealth. MSAs with stronger house price growth tend to have lower participation rates, but only for home owners around retirement age -- a 65-year-old homeowner's unconditional participation rate of 44.8% falls to 43.9% if he experiences a 10% excess house price growth. A counterfactual shows that if housing returns in 2021 would have been equal to 2019 returns, there would have been no decline in the labor force participation of older Americans. To better understand these empirical findings, we build a life cycle model with realistic heterogeneity in wealth, income, and ownership status. We show that in response to a positive shock to house prices, owners reduce hours while renters increase hours, as in our empirical results.
4. Chinese Overseas Buyers in U.S. Housing Markets, first-year summer paper, September 2021
Abstract: Using around 8 million housing transactions in California from 1994 to 2017, I find that Chinese overseas buyers (COB) earn 4.5% lower returns than other cash buyers, controlling for market timing and location factors. The large gap in housing returns is driven by purchase prices instead of sale prices. Controlling cash payment benefits, property, and market timing, COB will pay 8-12% higher prices than other cash buyers. By implementing DID event study and two-way fixed effects DID models, I find that 10% overpayment can be explained by the lack of investment opportunities arising from home-purchase restrictions in China. The remaining overpayment can be due to cultural differences. Combining IV and DID estimation, I explore the influence of COBs on U.S. local housing prices.
5. Tracking Long-run Portfolio Payouts: How and When Do Technological Innovators Return Cash to Shareholders?, with Jan Bena, Adlai Fisher, Jiri Knesl, July 2024
Summary: We track the full spectrum of cash flows that investors ultimately receive—including dividends, repurchases, equity issuances, and the merger and acquisition payouts—over horizons of up to 25 years.
