Ph.D. Candidate in Finance at Merage School of Business, UC Irvine


HeeSeoHan_website photo 2022.jpg

Education


Ph.D. in Finance (in progress) Merage School of Business, UC Irvine

M.S. in Business Administration - Finance Seoul National University

Bachelor of Business Administration Bachelor of Art in Psychology Ewha Womans University

Research Interest


Welcome to my homepage!


I am currently a fourth-year PhD student, deeply interested in exploring behavioral finance, particularly in investor decision-making.

My research focuses on understanding how individual behaviors, cognitive biases, and market dynamics interact to shape financial world.

Through this website, I aim to share my academic journey and research updates.

Whether you're a fellow researcher or simply curious about behavioral finance, I hope you’ll find something here that resonates with you.

Thank you for visiting, and I look forward to sharing more with you soon!

Curriculum Vitae

Working Paper

Trading in Twilight: Sleep, Mental Alertness, and Stock Market Trading

with David Hirshleifer, Jinfei Sheng, and Zheng Sun

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We test whether mental alertness, as proxied by sleep disruption, impairs investor trading performance. Using four complementary approaches, we document that retail investors who experience a later sunset time on average earn lower abnormal returns on their trades. These approaches include panel regression with household fixed effects, RDD based on time zone borders, comparison of different seasons and latitudes, and daylight saving changes. Further tests suggest that the sleep disruption effect derives from impaired investor attention.

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How Costly are Trading Heuristics?

with Xindi He and Daniel Weagley

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We analyze the large set of trading heuristics discussed in top finance journal articles over the past 75 years using both retail and institutional trade-level data. We find that retail investors use about 70% of the heuristics more often than would be expected based on counterfactual simulated trading data. Retail trades using more heuristics are associated with lower future returns, with more than half of stock selection heuristics negatively linked to future performance. Institutions, in contrast, use only 15% of the heuristics more often than in the counterfactual data and benefit from their use. We model and empirically analyze the decision to use heuristics. We find heuristic use is more likely to persist for higher utility and better performing heuristics. We also find heuristic use is greater among female and larger retail investors.

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Contact


✉️ [email protected]

🎓 merage.uci.edu

:linkedin: Linkedin Page

:vm9nxqac_400x400: Author Page

Work in Progress


Languages


●      English (fluent)

●      Korean (native)

Awards


MFIN Outstanding Teaching Assistant UC Irvine | 2023, 2024

Ray Watson Doctoral Fellowship UC Irvine | 2024

High Pass on Comprehensive exam UC Irvine | 2023

DUO-Korea Fellowship ASEM-DUO | 2015

Beta Gamma Sigma, Business Honors Society Ewha Womans University | 2014-