2026–27 Job Market

Every case for a decision is made in what it might return. I measure what it costs.

Primary: Financial Economics
Secondary: Labor Economics · Applied Microeconomics

Weikang Zhang

Ph.D. Candidate in EconomicsSouthern Illinois University Carbondale

Curriculum vitae PDF Get in touch

Job market paper

HODL Strategy or Fantasy? 480 Million Crypto Market Simulations and the Macro-Sentiment Effect

With Alison Watts Under review, Global Finance Journal

Is waiting enough?

Crypto’s simplest promise is to buy, wait, and win. Held two to three years, the middle of the random draws finished 28.4 percentage points behind a Treasury bill, and the best quarter of those same draws averaged 1,326.7 points ahead. We ran 480 million holds to find that out: seven baskets that hold one named token throughout, and one that just picks a coin out of 378.

See what the waiting paid

Request the paper Email

Work in progress

Occupational Mobility and Earnings Dynamics

This project models how earnings and employment paths diverge among workers starting in the same occupation and wage position.

Research agenda

Teaching

Start with the question.

A student can finish the calculation and still not know why the answer is the answer. The finished work does not tell you which student you are looking at.

My approach to teaching