Dr. Liu, who joined KGI in July 2016, received her PhD in finance at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park in 2010. Prior to joining KGI, Liu served as Assistant Professor of Finance at the School of Business, UC Riverside, where she taught corporate finance, international finance, financial strategy, and corporate control in the undergraduate, MBA, Master of Finance, and EMBA programs. She was awarded by UCR EMBA Cohort 1 as the Distinguished Professor in 2011. Liu was also the 2006 Winner of the Krowe Award for Teaching Excellence, and the 2006 Winner of the Joseph Wikler Award for Teaching Excellence at the University of Maryland.
Liu’s primary research interest is empirical corporate finance, focusing on how corporate executive and director network, skillsets, and diversity affect turnover, promotion, and compensation contracts. She also studies how social connections affect earnings management, financial report readability, and the formation and returns of strategic alliances. Liu has published in the Journal of Corporate Finance and the Journal of Banking and Finance. Her research has been presented in international and regional academic conferences and featured in the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation and the Columbia Law School’s Blog on Corporations and the Capital Markets. She won the Outstanding Paper in Empirical Finance Award at the 2016 Southern Finance Association Conference.
“Outside Options and CEO Turnover: The Network Effect”, Journal of Corporate Finance 28 (2014), 201-217.
“The Price of Director Social Capital: The Effects of Corporate Demand for External Connectivity” (with S. P. Ferris and D. Javakhadze), Journal of Banking and Finance 111 (2020), 105729.