Zhou received his Ph.D. in economics (finance) in 1995 from Princeton University. He previously held a professorship at the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University.

He has worked for the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Federal Reserve.

His research has been published in journals including the Journal of Financial Economics and the Review of Financial Studies.

Princeton University Honorific Fellowship (one of the highest honors awarded to Princeton
graduate students), Princeton University, 1994-1995.

• Global Finance Association, Best Paper Award, 2001.

• National Excellent Young Researcher Grant, China, 2003.

"The Illusionary Nature of Momentum Profits", with Lesmond and Schill,Journal of Financial Economics, Volume: 71, Issue: 2, February, 2004.

"Credit Derivatives in Banking: Useful Tools for Managing Risk?, with Gregory Duffee, University of California at Berkeley, Journal of Monetary Economics, August 2001.

"An Analysis of Default Correlation and Multiple Defaults", Review of Financial Studies, May 2001.

"Time to Build and Investment,Review of Economics and Statistics, 82, 273-282, 2000.

"Informational Asymmetry and Market Imperfections: Another Solution to the Equity Premium Puzzle", Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 34, pp 445-464, 1999.

• Books and Book Chapters

"Wealth Forever: The Analytics of Stock Markets", World Scientific Publishing Company, 2003, with Sarkis J. Khoury, et al.

"Country Risk: Existing Models and New Horizons", with Sarkis J. Khoury, Victor Murinde & Andy Mullineux, editors.