Edwin Hu

Edwin Hu is an associate professor at University of Virginia School of Law. His scholarship is focused on the empirical analysis of corporate and securities law and the structure of financial markets. Before joining UVA Law, Professor Hu was a senior economic policymaker, advising the White House’s National Economic Council and as Chief Economist to SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson, Jr.

Professor Hu’s research studies gaps in market structure and financial regulation. His work on the regulation of financial advice shows how advisors who pose the most risk to investors seek out lax legal regimes to avoid accountability. Professor Hu’s study of institutional investors’ voting behavior identified how some funds seek share lending revenue rather than vote in contested corporate matters. And his examination of stock-exchange activity during the COVID-19 pandemic raised questions about the effects of outdated market structure on today’s investors.

Professor Hu’s research has helped produce significant policy reforms, including the SEC’s recent institutional voting transparency initiative and its proposal to increase competition for retail stock orders. His recent policy work includes an amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in FS Credit Opportunities Corp. v. Saba Capital Master Fund on behalf of securities-law scholars and former senior SEC officials, and a joint petition he co-Chaired with faculty from the Wharton School urging the SEC to modernize Rule 144. Professor Hu’s work has been published in leading academic journals, such as the Journal of Financial Economics, the Stanford Law Review, Management Science, and the Georgetown Law Journal, and his writing has appeared in the Financial Times. His research has been featured prominently across major periodicals including The Atlantic, Bloomberg, The Economist, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and the front page of The Wall Street Journal.

He holds two undergraduate degrees, in economics and applied computational mathematics, from the University of Washington, a masters and Ph.D. in finance from Rice University, and a J.D. from New York University School of Law, where he was a Furman Academic Scholar and a Fellow at the Institute for Corporate Governance & Finance.

Professor Hu served as Counsel to SEC Commissioner Robert J. Jackson, Jr. and as a Financial Economist in the Commission’s Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (2016–2020), conducting original research on market structure, financial intermediation, and corporate governance.

His research showed that slowing down trading reduced costs for investors, contributing to the Commission’s evaluation of exchange speed bumps. He led the first SEC economic analysis to use regulatory audit trail data, finding that off-exchange trading at the close had not harmed price discovery—a result that led NYSE to cut its top-tier closing auction fees by two-thirds. Separate evidence on tick size changes and market quality was later cited in Congressional testimony.

Professor Hu’s research on financial intermediation informed Commissioner Jackson’s dissent on Regulation Best Interest, showing that advisors not subject to a fiduciary standard were more likely to give conflicted advice. His evidence that private placement brokers have unusually high misconduct rates supported the Commissioner’s dissent on expanding private markets to retail investors.

On corporate governance, Professor Hu challenged proposed restrictions on shareholder proposals and opposed the rollback of Sarbanes-Oxley auditor attestation requirements. A letter to Congress revealed that large fund managers overwhelmingly vote against political spending disclosure despite lacking clear guidelines. His research on executive selling into stock buybacks showed long-run underperformance, informing a letter to Senator Van Hollen and legislation proposed by Senator Baldwin.