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
My name is Hee-Seo, pronounced Hee-suh (close to “He saw”). I am currently a fifth-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!
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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with Xindi He and Daniel Weagley
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We analyze investors’ buy-side trading tendencies—systematic patterns in stock purchases—using 14.5 years of trade-level data. One-fifth of tendencies documented in leading finance journals are no more prevalent among retail investors than under random trading, and institutions display only one-third as many tendencies as individuals. Among retail investors, the average tendency is associated with 128 bps lower 12-month returns, with costs and prevalence rising in volatile markets. The average masks substantial heterogeneity: attention-related tendencies are especially costly, while a few tendencies yield outperformance. Overall, fewer than half of documented tendencies are both prevalent and performance-reducing.
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: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-